In 1989, Henry Stommel anticipated a revolution in ocean observing capabilities brought by the development of new mobile platforms and sensing systems. We can now marvel at how much of what followed he had predicted. During the last years, one could witness growing activities with floats, gliders, and other AUVs throughout the world. Modern autonomous underwater vehicles allow to characterise the water column from both physical and biological points of view, across a continuum of space and time scales. Being able to periodically send the collected data via satellite telemetry to land stations, they provide observations which can be analysed in near-real time. These new autonomous platforms have significantly changed the way how experiments and observations, in both the coastal and open oceans, are carried out today.

This session provides an open forum for interdisciplinary discussions of the latest advances in oceanographic applications of autonomous underwater vehicles, including their use and complementarity in combination with other platforms. We welcome contributions on all aspects of the scientific analysis of data collected with such platforms on the coastal, regional, basin, or global scales. Topics for this session include physical (e.g. hydrology, hydrodynamics, acoustic, optic), geochemical (e.g. nutrients ) and biological (e.g. primary and secondary production, biomasses) variability of the ocean, ocean processes at different spatial and temporal scales (from ocean turbulence to basin-wide circulation), and interactions between the ocean, atmosphere and land. We also invite contributions on AUVs data management and on their operational use (e.g. in Operational forecasting systems) and on the development/implementation of new instrumentation and sensors.
Following the success of the last year, we propose again the PICO formula that is highly suitable for the session topic.