Real Time Ocean Monitoring Stations - meteorological and ocean data from Madge Reef (Thursday Island) Masig (Yorke) Island from 2012 onwards (NERP TE 2.3, AIMS)

Brief description

The data consists of ten minute readings of above water meteorological parameters (wind speed, wind direction, barometric pressure, air temperature and humidity) from a Vaisala WTX520 instrument, above water light as Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) from a Li-COR Li-192 sensor and below water parameters including Salinity using a Sea-Bird SBE37 CTD and temperature via a Sea-Bird SBE39 temperature sensor. Data are from two sites, one at Madge Reef near Thursday Island (-10.595125° | 142.220572°) and one at Masig (Yorke) Island (-9.758293° | 143.397584°).
The data feeds into Bayesian models of coral bleaching and has the goal of identifying conditions that may lead to coral bleaching in the region.

The data is collected in real time every two minutes with the data coming back into AIMS and then into the AIMS Data Centre. The Madge Reef station was installed in August 2012 and the Masig station in July 2013. The design of the station and the format of the data reflects the IMOS Sensor Network project.
The data is available via the AIMS Web page go to Data then Weather Stations and then select Thursday Island or Masig Island.
The data is collected as part of a wider project to measure and identify conditions that may lead to coral bleaching. This comes from an observed 2010 bleaching event where temperatures were above 31.4 degrees and where wide-scale bleaching was observed. Bayesian models are used to integrate a range of real time and forecast data to identify times of high risk and to give short term forecasts as to how that risk will change over the next few days. The aim is to identify times of potential coral bleaching and whether this risk will increase or decrease in the immediate future.


Methods:

The data is collected via deployed instruments.

Above water meteorological data:
- From a Vaisala WTX520 weather instrument located at the top of a 6m galvanised pole located on the reef flat. This gives on-water reef conditions for basic weather parameters and is not designed to be a meteorological grade weather station but to give actual on-reef conditions.

Above water light
- A Li-Cor Li-192 PAR sensor is used to measure the ambient light levels as Photosynthentically Active Radiation – that is the part of the spectrum that is used by plants to convert light to sugars – remembering that corals have symbiotic algae within their tissues.

In Water conditions:
- A combination of a Sea-Bird SBE-37 CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) and a Sea-Bird SBE-39 are used to measure in-water temperatures and salinity.

Coral bleaching is thought to be a response to excessive temperature and light stress and potentially low salinity. The combination of instruments is used to measure the in-situ temperature and salinity, the light sensors gives total light budget for the day and the meteorological instruments give data on conditions where by atmospheric heat is transferred to and from the water column. The combination of these data streams allows you to measures in-situ conditions as well as to predict if the system is losing or gaining heat from the atmosphere and so give a measure of the current coral bleaching risk and how this may change.


Limitations:

The data has automated quality control applied but not a more detailed manual quality control. The Bayesian models are still under construction and are being fine-tuned as more data is collected.


Format:

The data is available via the AIMS Data Centre in a number of formats (CSV, NetCDF, etc) at the following URL's:

Thursday Island:
- http://data.aims.gov.au/aimsrtds/datatool.xhtml?site=921
Masig Island:
- http://data.aims.gov.au/aimsrtds/datatool.xhtml?site=2601