A multinational observation network PIRATA (Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic) has just gained support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Research Vessel (NRV) Alliance to accomplish studies, monitoring and maintenance requirements of this essential climate monitoring program. A five-year framework agreement between NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), signed in December 2015, marks a breakthrough in transatlantic cooperation while fostering sharing of assets and capabilities in oceanic and atmospheric monitoring in the North Atlantic.

PIRATA is a program designed to study ocean-atmosphere interactions in the tropical Atlantic that affect regional climate variability on seasonal, interannual and longer time scales. The array was originally developed in the mid-1990s and has undergone expansions and enhancements since 2005 to improve its utility for describing, understanding, and predicting societally relevant climate fluctuations. PIRATA has been implemented through multi-national cooperation in support of CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability, and Change), GOOS (Global Ocean Observing System), GCOS (Global Climate Observing System), and GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems). Financial, technical and logistic support are provided by France (IRD (French Research Institute for Development) in collaboration with Meteo-France, CNRS (The French National Centre for Scientific Research) and IFREMER (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea)), Brazil (INPE (National Institute of Space Research) and DHN (Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation)) and the USA (NOAA). Data are freely available for research and operational applications via the World Wide Web and the Global Telecommunications System.

The world-class NRV Alliance, operated by CMRE, has proved to be particularly well-suited to help accomplish PIRATA's mission. In this context, NOAA Vice Admiral Michael S. Devany, Deputy Under Secretary for Operations at NOAA, and Rear Admiral (Rtd.) Hank Ort, CMRE Director, signed the five-year framework agreement to facilitate research vessel support from NRV Alliance in particular, with monitoring of meteorological, hydrological, and oceanographic processes, bathymetry, and climate.

The agreement is already being implemented in the US-led PIRATA Northeast Extension (PNE)'15 cruise, the first NOAA charter of NRV Alliance, conducted in tropical and equatorial waters of the western Atlantic from mid-November to mid-December 2015. As a main activity, PNE '15 plans include the service and maintenance of the four moorings of the PIRATA NE extension.

Secondary activities are: the collection of in situ measurements to characterize the impacts of continental African aerosol outflows across the Atlantic Ocean, the collection of data to evaluate upper ocean hydrography, for example, for studying variability in the Tropical North Atlantic as well as for model verification; the collection of atmospheric profiles, for example for the calibration of satellite observations of ozone concentrations; in situ collection of air samples for validation of chemical models.