Nordic Seas nutrients data in CARINA

Water column data of carbon and carbon relevant hydrographic and hydrochemical parameters from 188 cruises in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Southern Ocean have been assembled and the collection merged into a new database: CARINA (CARbon IN the Atlantic). The data have been subject to rigorous quality co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Earth System Science Data
Main Authors: J. Olafsson, A. Olsen
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2-205-2010
https://doaj.org/article/8e6ce2e77d974e0bb6c4fed9a0e8df58
Description
Summary:Water column data of carbon and carbon relevant hydrographic and hydrochemical parameters from 188 cruises in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Southern Ocean have been assembled and the collection merged into a new database: CARINA (CARbon IN the Atlantic). The data have been subject to rigorous quality control (QC) in order to ensure highest possible quality and consistency. The data for most of the parameters included were examined in order to quantify systematic biases in the reported values, i.e. secondary quality control. Significant biases have been corrected for in the data products, i.e. the three merged files with measured, calculated and interpolated values for each of the three CARINA regions; the Arctic Mediterranean Seas (AMS), the Atlantic (ATL) and the Southern Ocean (SO). With the adjustments, the CARINA database is consistent both internally as well as with GLODAP (Key et al., 2004) and is suitable for accurate assessments of, for example, oceanic carbon inventories and uptake rates, and for model validation. The Arctic Mediterranean Seas is the collective term for the Arctic Ocean and the Nordic Seas, and the quality control was carried out separately in these two areas. This contribution presents an account of the quality control of the nutrients (nitrate, phosphate, and silicate) data from the Nordic Seas in CARINA. Out of the 35 cruises from the Nordic Seas included in CARINA, 33 had nutrients data. The nitrate data from 4 of these appeared to be of so poor quality that they should not be used, for phosphate this number is 7 and for silicate it is 3. We also recommend that the nitrate data from 4 of the cruises should be adjusted, for phosphate and silicate only data from one cruise should be adjusted. The final data appears consistent to 5% based on evaluation of deep data. For nitrate this corresponds to 0.6 μmol kg −1 , and for phosphate and silicate it corresponds to 0.04 and 0.6 μmol kg −1 , respectively.