Observing Requirements for Long-Term Climate Records at the Ocean Surface

Abstract

Frontiers in Marine Science | www.frontiersin.org July 2019 | Volume 6 | Article 441 Kent et al. Long-Term Surface Marine Recordsbiases and to improve methods of construction of CDRs. The requirements developed in this paper encompass specific actions involving a variety of stakeholders, including funding agencies, scientists, data managers, observing network operators, satellite agencies, and international co-ordination bodies.

Ship-Based Contributions to Global Ocean, Weather, and Climate Observing Systems

“…Even among those observations collected for climate applications, the motivation was to establish normal conditions rather than to quantify variability and longterm change. Requirements for the construction of long-term surface marine records are detailed in Kent et al (2019). Ship observations of ECVs and EOVs (Table 1) are far more valuable for the construction of climate records when they are a multivariate record described by extensive platform and observational metadata, including information related to quality assurance and quality control, uncertainty estimation, and bias adjustment.…”

“…The variables required to develop climate services include, inter alia, the following: air and sea temperature and humidity (e.g., for human safety/comfort operating at sea and seasonal prediction); wind, waves, and pressure (e.g., to establish design criteria and wind/wave loading of structures, coastal inundation, and ship routing); and oceanographic parameters (for seasonal prediction, evaluating ecosystem health, and studying biogeochemical cycles). Historically, ship observations have been the primary source of many of these variables ( Table 1) and underpin many of the climate datasets used (e.g., Kent et al, 2019).…”

“…The recent introduction of table-driven codes (the Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data or BUFR) to replace traditional alphanumeric codes (i.e., FM-13 SHIP Code) will help to increase the availability of high-resolution data and more detailed metadata in the coming years. However, the transition to BUFR is ongoing, and challenges remain for real-time data systems relating to varying ship-to-shore data exchange formats, the shore-side conversion to BUFR, and ensuring that all required data and metadata make it from real-time observations into the long-term climate archives (Kent et al, 2019).…”

“…In practice, the assignment of uncertainty estimates is challenging, and this is typically done by expert users rather than by data providers. In some cases, biases in the observations can be identified and quantified, adjustments applied, and the uncertainty in that adjustment estimated (Kent et al, 2019). The quality of the adjustment for bias and the estimation of uncertainty in observations are dependent on the availability of observational metadata (providing information on instruments, observing protocols, etc.…”

“…The quality of the adjustment for bias and the estimation of uncertainty in observations are dependent on the availability of observational metadata (providing information on instruments, observing protocols, etc. ), on information on data management practices (e.g., data precision and any conversions or calibrations applied), and, in some cases, on knowledge of the ambient environmental conditions (Kent et al, 2019).…”