Long-term variation of surface phytoplankton chlorophyll a in the Southern Ocean during 1965-2002

Progress Code: completed Statement: In the dataset over the 38-year period of 1965-2002, we used the value of water between 25 degrees N to 55 degrees S along the cruise track between Tokyo and Antarctica, during the period between 15 November and 28 December of each year. Although the sea surface w...

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Bibliographic Details
Format: Dataset
Language:unknown
Published: Australian Ocean Data Network
Subjects:
AMD
Online Access:https://researchdata.edu.au/long-term-variation-1965-2002/2822847
Description
Summary:Progress Code: completed Statement: In the dataset over the 38-year period of 1965-2002, we used the value of water between 25 degrees N to 55 degrees S along the cruise track between Tokyo and Antarctica, during the period between 15 November and 28 December of each year. Although the sea surface water was sampled with a plastic bucket or pump (8 m), no significant difference in the chl a between sampling procedures was found. The chl a was determined colourimetrically until 1980 (except in 1967 and 1972) and fluorometrically since 1981. The data collected colourimetrically was corrected to a concentration corresponding to the fluorometric measurements. Difference in the chl a between the solvents was not significant. The variation in the phytoplankton biomass over a decadal time scale, and its relationship with the Antarctic Circumpolar Wave (ACW) and climate change, has been poorly interpreted because of the limited satellite chlorophylla (chl a) data compared with the physical parameters from satellite. We analysed a long-term chl a dataset along the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE) cruise tracks since 1965 to investigate inter-annual variation of phytoplankton biomass. In the Southern Ocean, increasing trends of chl a and the spreading of higher chl a area to the north with 3-7 year cycles were found. Although relationships between the decadal change in chl a and climate change such as variation of sea ice extent and the El Nino are still obscure, large variation of primary production in proportion to the chl a is implied. The chl a concentration of sea surface water has been measured routinely on board the icebreakers Fuji and Shirase during almost every cruise of the JARE. The download file contains chlorophyll a data collected from ship tracks on JARE voyages between 1965 and 2002. The field in this dataset are: Date (local time) Year Latitude Longitude Corrected Chlorophyll a See the attached paper for more details. The publications on the data collected during the 1965-1976 and ...