Assessment of Arctic sea ice and ocean observing systems based on INTAROS survey
Abstract
INTAROS is a research and innovation project funded by EC Horizon 2020. A major goal of its WP2 "Exploitation of existing observing systems" is to analyze strengths, weaknesses, gaps in spatial/temporal coverage, and missing monitoring parameters of existing observation networks and databases in relation to the requirements from different user groups. An important tool to do this was a set of questionnaires that assess existing observing systems, in situ and remote sensing data collections. The questionnaires are presented in Pirazzini et al. 2018. Based on the responses from INTAROS partners, we here present the results of the first assessment of ocean and sea ice observing systems in the Arctic.
In INTAROS, an observing system is defined to be a set of data collected from the same types of instruments and platforms over time (e.g. CTD surveys by ships, network of moorings, glider surveys). In-situ data collections can be part of one or more observing systems, or they can be a stand-alone dataset from a campaign. Several institutions can agree to establish and operate a network of instruments/stations collecting a set of standard measurements, and on sharing and exploitation of the data (e.g, International Arctic Buoy Programme or ARGO). An important part of the analysis was to address the spatial/temporal coverage, uncertainty characterization, timeliness, lack of observed parameters, and metadata description of the data collections from the in-situ ocean observing systems. To do this, it is important to have some requirements to compare with. This was a difficult topic for the in-situ ocean observing systems since the requirements are often developed for combined and gridded data and not for the distributed and heterogenous ones. A major outcome of the assessment is that the technical readiness level for the standard sensor technologies and platforms is generally high. This indicates that ocean observing systems are generally robust in open ocean, but it was also revealed that the platforms are less tested and less robust in ice covered regions. Furthermore, less biogeochemical data is available compared to physical data, due to fewer automated systems for biogeochemical data. The survey also shows that most ocean observing systems in the Arctic are usually funded by research programmes, and longterm funding is rare.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.A24K..07S
- Keywords:
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- 0399 General or miscellaneous;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0434 Data sets;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0799 General or miscellaneous;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 4299 General or miscellaneous;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL