Oceanographic observations in supercooled water: Protocols for mitigation of measurement errors in profiling and moored sampling

Cold Regions Science and Technology (2019)

Here we present a thoroughly-tested set of observational protocols that have been developed over 15 years working in supercooled Ice Shelf Water in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.

We identify the four issues most commonly encountered in observations of supercooled ocean water as the requirement for an extended process of thermal equilibration; contamination by ice within conductivity cells; anchor ice accumulation on suspended equipment and; ice coating and resultant sensing of artificially-produced latent heat.

We present protocols for identifying and managing these potential modes of corruption, and stress the need for planned data redundancy to enable identification and elimination of contaminated data.