FerryBox data in the North Sea from 2002 to 2005

Wilhelm Petersen,Michail Petschatnikov,Henrike Thomas,Henning Wehde,Susanne Reinke,Gisbert Breitbach

doi:10.5194/essd-10-1729-2018

Wilhelm Petersen, Michail Petschatnikov + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-1729-2018

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Abstract

Abstract. From 2002 to 2005 a FerryBox system was installed aboard two different ferries travelling between Cuxhaven (Germany) and Harwich (UK) on a daily basis. The FerryBox system is an automated flow-through monitoring system for measuring oceanographic and biogeochemical parameters installed on ships of opportunity. The variables were recorded in a time interval of 10–20 s, corresponding to a spatial resolution of about 100 m. The data set provides the parameters water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll a fluorescence. There is a longer data gap between November 2002 and August 2003 in the time series due to a change of the vessel in October 2002. The data are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.883824 (Petersen et al., 2017) and as part of the COSYNA (Coastal Observing System for Northern and Arctic Seas) data portal CODM at http://codm.hzg.de/codm (last access: September 2018) or https://doi.org/10.17616/R3K02T (Breitbach, 2018).

Highlights

Monitoring of a highly dynamic system such as coastal waters requires dense sampling in space and time in order to catch short-term events, which might have a strong impact on the coastal ecosystem
Existing observations mostly lack the spatial coverage and temporal resolution required to determine the state of the marine environment and changes therein
The data of FerryBox systems are restricted to the track and to surface waters at a certain depth

Summary

Introduction

Monitoring of a highly dynamic system such as coastal waters requires dense sampling in space and time in order to catch short-term events (e.g. storms, algal blooms), which might have a strong impact on the coastal ecosystem. The data set provides the parameters water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll a fluorescence. We present a data set of surface water temperature, salinity, chlorophyll a fluorescence and dissolved oxygen from March 2002 to October 2005.

Results

Conclusion