SNOMS Swire NOCS Ocean Monitoring System: Diary of the system development and installation on the MV Pacific Celebes in 2006 and 2007

The SNOMS project brings together the resources of the United Kingdom’s National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton (one of the world’s leading centres for marine research) and The Swire Group (a major multinational corporation) to make a significant contribution towards improving our understanding of the role of the oceans in controlling concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and hence the worlds climate. The Swire Group Charitable Trust funded the design, assembly and installation of a scientific data collection system on their ship the MV Pacific Celebes. The system is now providing data from areas where no or little data exists particularly in the Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Mediterranean. It links with and connects on-going observations in the Atlantic. Data from the system supports projects both at NOC and elsewhere including the IOCPP (International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project). This report provides an illustrated diary of the progress of the project between signing of the contract between the Swire Group and NOC in March 2006 and the installation of the working system on the MV Pacific Celebes in June 2007. A new type of system for monitoring the partial pressure of CO2 at the sea surface had to be developed which could run autonomously of NOC with only periodic servicing by the ship’s crew. This was done by designing a simple tank system to contain temperature, conductivity and dissolved oxygen sensors built by Aanderaa and the new CO2 device the “ProCO2” developed by ProOceanus in Canada. This would be used with the ProOceanus total gas Pressure device the GTD. The system was assembled and tested at NOC before its first sea trial on the P&O ferry MV Pride of Bilbao in November 2006. Modifications were made after this trial. A longer trial was carried out on the Pride of Bilbao from February to April 2007. The system was shipped to Singapore in May 2007, and installation was completed in Jakarta on 4 June 2007.