This proposal supports the scripps institution of oceanography (SIO) proposal (voet/alford/leboyer) to deploy instruments built by the ocean mixing group at oregon state university (OSU) for…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded Oregon State University $593,144 under the Climate and Atmospheric Research program (CFDA 11.431) on June 1, 2026, to build and calibrate instrumentation for ocean mixing research. OSU's Ocean Mixing Group will construct, calibrate, and test 15 instrument pods for deployment by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in support of the TEPEX-E research initiative. OSU will also transfer technical knowledge to enable SIO to build additional pods for future deployments. The instruments will measure turbulence-enhanced mixing in the Pacific's cold tongue region, generating data to support physics-based and machine-learning parameterizations for equatorial ocean circulation models. Work is performed in Corvallis, Oregon, with a period of performance through May 31, 2028. The award directly supports NOAA's Climate Program Office 2024–2028 strategic plan goals for advancing climate change adaptation, resilience, and mitigation science.

This proposal supports the scripps institution of oceanography (SIO) proposal (voet/alford/leboyer) to deploy instruments built by the ocean mixing group at oregon state university (OSU) for tepex-e. OSU will build, calibrate and test 15 pods for SIO to deploy. OSU will also pass on technical knowledge to aid SIO to construct pods for future deployments. This proposal directly addresses noaas climate program office 2024-2028 strategic plan goal 1: advance the science foundation for climate change adaptation, resilience and mitigation through strategic objectives 1.22, 1.23, 1.24, 1.31, 1.32 by providing unique measurements that will help to define the off-equatorial nature of turbulence-enhanced mixing in the pacifics cold tongue. Of broader importance, this proposal will leave a legacy data set for building physics-based and machine learning parameterizations to be implemented in numerical models of equatorial ocean circulation.