Metadata Report for BODC Series Reference Number 2093495

• Metadata Summary

• Problem Reports

• Data Access Policy

• Narrative Documents

• Project Information

• Data Activity or Cruise Information

• Fixed Station Information

• BODC Quality Flags

• SeaDataNet Quality Flags

Metadata Summary

Problem Reports

No Problem Report Found in the Database

Data Access Policy

Open Data supplied by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

You must always use the following attribution statement to acknowledge the source of the information: "Contains data supplied by Natural Environment Research Council."

Narrative Documents

Niskin Bottle

The Niskin bottle is a device used by oceanographers to collect subsurface seawater samples. It is a plastic bottle with caps and rubber seals at each end and is deployed with the caps held open, allowing free-flushing of the bottle as it moves through the water column.

Standard Niskin

The standard version of the bottle includes a plastic-coated metal spring or elastic cord running through the interior of the bottle that joins the two caps, and the caps are held open against the spring by plastic lanyards. When the bottle reaches the desired depth the lanyards are released by a pressure-actuated switch, command signal or messenger weight and the caps are forced shut and sealed, trapping the seawater sample.

Lever Action Niskin

The Lever Action Niskin Bottle differs from the standard version, in that the caps are held open during deployment by externally mounted stainless steel springs rather than an internal spring or cord. Lever Action Niskins are recommended for applications where a completely clear sample chamber is critical or for use in deep cold water.

Clean Sampling

A modified version of the standard Niskin bottle has been developed for clean sampling. This is teflon-coated and uses a latex cord to close the caps rather than a metal spring. The clean version of the Levered Action Niskin bottle is also teflon-coated and uses epoxy covered springs in place of the stainless steel springs. These bottles are specifically designed to minimise metal contamination when sampling trace metals.

Deployment

Bottles may be deployed singly clamped to a wire or in groups of up to 48 on a rosette. Standard bottles and Lever Action bottles have a capacity between 1.7 and 30 L. Reversing thermometers may be attached to a spring-loaded disk that rotates through 180° on bottle closure.

Dissolved and Particulate Trace Metals for TWEED campaign and RRS Challenger cruises.

Document History

Converted from CDROM documentation.

Content of data series

Data Originator

Dr Reg Uncles, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK.

Sampling strategy and methodology

Tweed campaigns TWEED02, TWEED03, TWEED04, TWEED05, TWEED06, TWEED07, TWEED08, TWEED10, TWEED12 and TWEED13.
RRS Challenger cruises CH99, CH115B, CH115C and CH119A.

Challenger Dissolved Aluminium

Water samples were taken from either the CTD rosette or the ship's non-toxic supply. The samples were filtered through a 0.45-micron pore filter and aluminium was determined following complexation by lumogallion and fluorimetric determination of the Al complex (Hydes and Liss, 1976). All analytical work was undertaken on board ship.

Tweed Dissolved Trace Metals

The water samples were collected manually in acid-cleaned plastic bottles, filtered through 0.45-micron pore filters and acidified. Prior to analysis the samples were processed using the method of Danielsson et al. (1982) to remove interfering matrix. The modified samples were analysed using an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS).

The data were supplied expressed as parts per billion (PPB), which is equivalent to ng/l. They were converted to nM at BODC through division by their atomic weights. The atomic weights used were 112.4 for cadmium, 63.55 for copper, 55.85 for iron, 207.2 for lead, 54.94 for manganese and 58.69 for nickel.

References

Achterberg, E. P. and van den Berg, C.M.G., 1994. Automated voltammetric system for shipboard determination of metal speciation in sea water. Anal. Chim. Acta 284, 463-471.

Colombo, C and van den Berg, C.M.G., 1997. Simultaneous determination of several trace metals in seawater using cathodic stripping voltammetry with mixed ligands. Anal. Chim. Acta 337, 29-40.

Heron, S.J. and Burton, J.D., 1987. Evaluation of a Spectrofluorimetric Method for Aluminium by Lumogallion. Final Report on Department of Environment Contract No. PECD 7/7/173. Department of Oceanography, University of Southampton. January 1987, 22 pp.

Hydes, D.J. and Liss, P.S., 1976. A fluorimetric method for the determination of low concentrations of dissolved aluminium in natural waters. Analyst 101, 922 931.

Morley, N.H., Statham P.J. and Fay, C., 1988. Design and use of a clean shipboard handling system for seawater samples. In: Advances in Underwater Technology, Ocean Science and Offshore Engineering, Volume 16 (Oceanology '88), Graham and Trotman, London, 283-290.

Nimmo, M., van den Berg, C.M.G. and Brown, J., 1989. The chemical speciation of dissolved nickel, copper, vanadium and iron in Liverpool Bay, Irish Sea. Coastal Shelf Res. 29, 57-74.

Pihlar, B., Valenta, P. and Nurnberg, H.W., 1981. New high-performance analytical procedure for the voltammetric determination of nickel in routine analysis of waters, biological materials and food. Fres. Z. Anal. Chem. 307, 337-346.

Tappin, A.D., Millward, G.E., Burton, J.D., Statham, P.J. and Morris, A.W., 1995. Trace metals in the central and southern North Sea. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 41, 275-323.

Project Information

LOIS River-Atmosphere-Coast Study (LOIS - RACS)

Introduction

The Land-Ocean Interaction Study (LOIS) was a NERC research programme designed to study processes in the coastal zone. The Rivers, Atmosphere and Coasts Study (RACS) was a major component of LOIS that looked at land-sea interactions in the coastal zone and the major exchanges (physical, chemical and biological) between rivers and estuaries and the atmosphere. The study focused on the east coast of the UK from the Wash to the Tweed.

RACS included several sub-components

• BIOTA - A study of salt marshes of the Humber and Wash
• RACS (A) - An atmospheric chemistry study looking at air mass changes from the Wash into East Anglia
• RACS (C) - A study of the estuaries, coasts and coastal waters between Great Yarmouth and Berwick upon Tweed.
  1. The coastal oceangraphic survey
  2. The Humber estuarine study
  3. The Tweed estuarine study
  4. The Holderness experiment
• RACS (R) - A study of rivers that drain into the North Sea

RACS (A) was coordinated by the University of East Anglia and RACS (C) by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

RACS (A)

The bulk of the RACS (A) data set was collected during two field campaigns in the winter (October/November) of 1994 and the summer (May/June) of 1995. During these campaigns data were collected continuously from the University of East Anglia Atmospheric Observatory at Weybourne on the north Norfolk coast. An instrumented vessel was stationed offshore to provide a second sampling site to allow changes in a given air mass to be monitored. The Imperial College Jetstream research aircraft made one flight during each campaign to provide a link between the two surface stations. The Jetstream made four additional flights in 1996 and 1997.

RACS (C)

The coastal oceanographic survey

The coastal oceanographic data set was collected during a series of 17 RRS Challenger cruise legs. Most cruises covered two survey grids. One from Great Yarmouth to the Humber designed around the distribution of the sandbanks and a second simple zig-zag grid from the Humber to Berwick on Tweed. A large number of anchor stations, usually over one or two tidal cycles, were worked in the area of the Humber mouth or the Holderness coast.

The Humber estuarine study

The Humber estuarine data set was collected during a series of 33 campaigns on the Environment Agency vessels Sea Vigil and Water Guardian in the Humber, Trent and Ouse river systems at approximately monthly intervals between June 1993 and December 1996. Each campaign consisted of two or three one-day cruises. The tracks covered the estuary from the tidal limits of both Trent and Ouse to Spurn Point. Instrumental and sample data are available from a series of fixed stations that were sampled during every campaign.

The Tweed estuarine study

The Tweed estuarine data set was collected during a series of 13 campaigns using RV Tamaris in association with a rigid inflatable vessel at approximately monthly intervals between July 1996 and July 1997. Each campaign covered the tidal reaches of the River Tweed.

The Holderness experiment

The Holderness Experiment was designed to monitor the process of sediment transport along the Holderness coastline. It consisted of three moored instrument deployments during the winters of 1993-1994, 1994-1995 and 1995-1996. Mooring platforms were deployed at eight stations along two lines off the Holderness coast. A northerly and a southerly line of four stations each were used (N1 - N4 and S1 to S4) with the lowest numbers being inshore. Both lines were approximately perpendicular to the coast, although the S4 station lay to the south of the S line, off Spurn Head.

Data Activity or Cruise Information

Data Activity

BODC Sample Metadata Report for CH99_CTD_CTD82

Please note:the supplied parameters may not have been sampled from all the bottle firings described in the table above. Cross-match the Sample Reference Number above against the SAMPRFNM value in the data file to identify the relevant metadata.

Cruise

Complete Cruise Metadata Report is available here

Fixed Station Information

Fixed Station Information

LOIS (RACS) anchor station HAS2/SG23

Several anchor stations were worked by the LOIS RACS Challenger cruises with the ship at anchor for periods of between 12 and 24 hours. The anchor station designations are of something of a mixed bag. Some correspond to stations on either the Humber-Wash (HW) or Humber-Tweed (HT) grids, the N and S stations are mooring site designations for the RACS Holderness Experiment and the SG station designations were unique to Challenger cruise CH119A.

HAS2, also know as SG23, is an anchor station at position 53.59°N, 0.037°E worked during the Challenger cruises CH99 and CH119A (no CTD profiles were collected during CH119A).

On most cruises the ship's instruments (including nutrients) monitored the surface water from the non-toxic supply. In addition, CTD profiles were collected at regular intervals at each anchor station, however the sampling strategy varied from cruise to cruise. Typically, the minimum coverage was a CTD cast every hour with water samples taken from the rosette, however sometimes additional casts without water sampling were taken to increase the sampling frequency to every 30 minutes or even 15 minutes.

Related Fixed Station activities are detailed in Appendix 1

BODC Quality Control Flags

The following single character qualifying flags may be associated with one or more individual parameters with a data cycle:

SeaDataNet Quality Control Flags

The following single character qualifying flags may be associated with one or more individual parameters with a data cycle:

Appendix 1: LOIS RACS anchor station HAS1/SG23

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