Recommended CTD Resources

Hydrographer Leah McRaven (PO WHOI) from the US OSNAP team provided the following CTD resources to help researchers and others better how she and the Irminger Sea Array team are working with the near real-time data being provided by CTD sampling from the R/V Neil Armstrong: 

There are four main sources considered in this list:

  1. Seabird Electronics is one of the most commonly used manufacturers of shipboard CTD systems. Their CTDs allow for integration of instruments from several other manufactures.
  2. The Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) provides decadal resolution of the changes in inventories of heat, freshwater, carbon, oxygen, nutrients and transient tracers, with global measurements of the highest required accuracy to detect these changes. Their program has documented several methods and practices that are critical to high-accuracy hydrography, which are relevant to many CTD data users.
  3. The California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) are a unique partnership of the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries Service and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. CalCOFI conducts quarterly cruises off southern & central California, collecting a suite of hydrographic and biological data on station and underway. CalCOFI has made great effort to document methods that are helpful to those collecting hydrographic measurements near coastal regions.
  4. University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) is an organization of 58 academic institutions and National Laboratories involved in oceanographic research and joined for the purpose of coordinating oceanographic ships’ schedules and research facilities.

Instrument care and use

Seabird training module on how sensor care and calibrations impact data: https://www.seabird.com/cms-portals/seabird_com/cms/documents/training/Module9_GettingHighestAccuracyData.pdf

Data acquisition and processing

Notes on CTD/O2 Data Acquisition and Processing Using Seabird Hardware and Software: https://www.go-ship.org/Manual/McTaggart_et_al_CTD.pdf

CalCOFI Seabird processing: https://calcofi.org/about-calcofi/methods/119-ctd-methods/330-ctd-data-processing-protocol.html

Seabird CTD processing training material: https://www.seabird.com/training-materials-download

Within this material, discussion on dynamic errors and how to address them in data processing: https://www.seabird.com/cms-portals/seabird_com/cms/documents/training/Module11_AdvancedDataProcessing.pdf

General overview documents and resources

GOSHIP hydrography manual: https://www.go-ship.org/HydroMan.html

CalCOFI CTD general practices: https://www.calcofi.org/references/methods/64-ctd-general-practices.html

UNOLS site https://www.unols.org/documents/water-column-sampling-and-instrumentation?page=2 )