Southern Ocean Flux Station

The Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS) mooring is tasked with building a climate record in the Southern Ocean. This will be achieved by observing and understanding the air-sea interactions and surface forcing in the Sub-Antarctic Zone, approximately 350 nautical miles southwest of Tasmania (46.75S, 142E).

SOFS is one of multiple ocean observing platforms contributing to the Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) site which aims to obtain frequent measurements of surface and deep ocean properties that control the transfer heat, moisture, energy and CO₂ from the atmosphere to the upper ocean to improve understanding of climate and carbon processes. SOTS is part of the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). SOFS is an OceanSITES reference station with World Meteorological Organisation station number 58450.
SOFS will obtain accurate measurements of meteorology, sea temperature and photosynthetically active radiation in the top 200m of the ocean. The buoy was deployed on 17th of March, 2010 at 11:09 (UTC) from the RV Southern Surveyor in 4624m water depth.