The Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) is a laboratory in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , pronounced , like "noah", is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...

 (NOAA)/Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

The Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . OAR is also referred to as NOAA Research....

 (OAR).

PMEL carries out interdisciplinary scientific investigations in oceanography

Oceanography

Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...

 and atmospheric

Earth's atmosphere

The atmosphere of Earth is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention , and reducing temperature extremes between day and night...

 science to improve our understanding of the complex physical and geochemical processes operating in the world ocean

Ocean

An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas.More than half of this area is over 3,000...

s, especially the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

, to define the forcing functions and the processes driving ocean circulation

Ocean current

An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of ocean water generated by the forces acting upon this mean flow, such as breaking waves, wind, Coriolis effect, cabbeling, temperature and salinity differences and tides caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun...

 and the global climate

Climate

Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...

 system, and to improve environmental forecasting capabilities and other supporting services for marine commerce and fisheries

Fishery

Generally, a fishery is an entity engaged in raising or harvesting fish which is determined by some authority to be a fishery. According to the FAO, a fishery is typically defined in terms of the "people involved, species or type of fish, area of water or seabed, method of fishing, class of boats,...

.

PMEL projects

• El Nino
• Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) project
• Ocean Acidification
• Carbon Program
• Argo Profiling CTD floats - A weather system for the Ocean
• NOAA Center for Tsunami Research
  NOAA Center for Tsunami Research
  The NOAA Center for Tsunami Research , located at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, WA, performs research in support of tsunami forecast models to increase the speed and accuracy of operational forecasts and warnings, tsunami inundation models to predict tsunami impacts on...
  
  
• VENTS - underwater volcanos & deep sea ecosystems
• EcoFOCI - Fisheries Oceanography
• Atmospheric Chemistry Group
• Ocean Climate Stations
• Arctic