Abstract
Abstract. Seven oceanographic cruises in 5 years were organized in the Sea of Sardinia with the repeated collection of physical, chemical and biological data. An accurate and sustained quality assurance on physical sensors was enacted through pre- and postcruise calibration and verified during in situ acquisitions with the use of redundant sensors and other instruments. Moreover, for dissolved oxygen and conductivity, seawater samples at standard depths were frequently analyzed on board. Then an accurate quality control was used to verify all hydrological data profiles, which passed a further quality check following standard procedures. Finally all hydrological data have been included in two online public open-access datasets in the SEANOE (SEA scieNtific Open data Edition) repository (https://doi.org/10.17882/59867 and https://doi.org/10.17882/70340; Ribotti et al., 2019a, b). During and after all cruises Chlorophyll a and nutrient analyses were also carried out, but these data are not yet open access; the same applies for water current profiles, both at casts and during vessel moves, and geophysical data. These ocean data are the first covering the Sea of Sardinia for its whole extension. Here data and assurance and control procedures used are described as they have become standards in deep-sea acquisitions over the years.
Highlights
Between May 2000 and January 2004 the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy collected hydrodynamic, chemical and biological data in the Sea of Sardinia during seven multidisciplinary oceanographic cruises, MedGOOS 1 to MedGOOS 7
Thanks to the data acquired during the first MedGOOS cruises, Puillat et al (2003) and Ribotti et al (2004) identified the main water masses usually observed in the rest of the western Mediterranean sea, like the Atlantic Water (AW) in the upper 150 m, the Winter Intermediate Water and its modified version known as the temperature minimum layer
In this paper we describe all the procedures or best practices followed to assure and control the quality of the acquired data during the MedGOOS cruises, the sensors used, and the sensors’ calibrations and intercomparisons
Summary
Between May 2000 and January 2004 the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy collected hydrodynamic, chemical and biological data in the Sea of Sardinia during seven multidisciplinary oceanographic cruises, MedGOOS 1 to MedGOOS 7. This water is characterized by high heat and salt content from the advected Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW), forming the new WMDW in the northwestern Mediterranean sub-basin (Gasparini et al, 2005; Schroeder et al, 2006; Zunino et al, 2012; Ribotti et al, 2016) Due to such oceanographic importance, since the 1950s French or Italian unsystematic cruises have been organized in the area, whose data are available in the PANGAEA (https://www.pangaea.de, last access: 20 December 2019) and SEANOE (SEA scieNtific Open data Edition) repositories (Dumas et al, 2018).
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