RB-03-01
Western Boundary Time Series 2003 Readme File

Ship:				NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown
Cruise Start:		        Charleston, S.C., February 4, 2003
Cruise End:			Miami, FL, February 15, 2003
Chief Scientist:		Chris Meinen
System Operator:		Jonathan Shannahoff
Expocode:                       33RO20030206

Method:
Infrared absorption of dried gas.  For details of the system see: 
Measurement of fugacity of Carbon Dioxide in surface water and air using continuous 
sampling methods.  Wanninkhof and Thoning, 1993 in Marine Chemistry 44, 189-205, 
And:
Feely, R.A., R. Wanninkhof, H.B. Milburn, C.E. Cosca, M. Stapp, and P.P. Murphy, 
A new automated underway system for making high precision pCO2 measurements 
onboard research ships, Analytica Chim. Acta, 377, 185-191, 1998.

The three standard gases come from CMDL in Boulder and are directly traceable to 
the WMO scale.

Sampling Cycle:
The system runs on an hourly cycle during which 3 standard gases, 3 air 
samples from the bow tower and 8 surface water samples (from the 
equilibrator head space) are analyzed on the following schedule:

Mins. after hour		Sample
4				Low Standard
8				Mid Standard
12				High Standard
16.5				Water
21				Water
25.5				Water
30				Water
34				Air
38				Air
42				Air
46.5				Water
51				Water
55.5				Water
60				Water

Units:
All xCO2 values are reported in parts per million (ppm) and fCO2 values 
are reported in hectopascals (hPa) assuming 100 % humidity at the 
equilibrator temperature.

Notes:
1.	Any values outside the range of the standards (295.37, 357.18, & 423.28 ppm) 
should be considered approximate (within 5 ppm).  While individual data points above 
423 or below 293 may not be accurate, the general trends should be indicative of the 
seawater chemistry.
2.  The Licor was not turned on for the first 49 hours and no data was collected 
during this time period.
3.  There was no water flow from Feb. 11 at 1720 to 1904 and from 2150 on Feb. 11 to 0955
on Feb. 12.  All water values during these time periods were removed.
4.  The salinity readings from the ship's TSG were bad from Feb. 14 at 1804 to Feb. 15 at
1151 and were suspect for much of the rest of the cruise.  They have been replaced with 
the YSI salinity - 0.2 for the entire data set where 0.2 is the approximate offset 
between the two sensors.


For questions or comments contact:
Bob Castle
4301 Rickenbacker Causeway
Miami, FL 33149
305-361-4418
robert.castle@noaa.gov