Norwegian Coast

Salinity of the water column; Temperature of the water column

Since 1935 one or two ships covering the route Bergen-Kirkenes have been supplied with temperature recorders attached to the cooling water intake of the engine room (about 4 metres depth). This was originally an analogue printer where marks were set on the paper when the fixed stations were passed. On these places water samples for salinity were taken and the temperature was manually recorded. This method opened for making overviews of the temperature situation between the fixed stations, however, this was rarely done. From the early 1980s, the ship(s) have been supplied with electronic logger with temperature and time, in recent years with parallel GPS logger with positions. The early logger measurements are stored on printouts only. Merged data sets with positions, temperature and time exists for the last years. These datasets are partly available on the web. The number of fixed observation points (stations) is currently 22. Most of these have been running since 1935. Reduced data sets, ten days, or monthly, means, exist for 18 stations for the whole period. Since 1984, the raw material of all stations has been keypunched.

Institute of Marine Research, Norwegian Marine Data Centre
Strandgaten 196 Postboks 1870 Nordnes
Bergen

N-5817
Norway