Measuring pCO2 with a C-sense and DataBank at the San Francisco Exploratorium

Parameters: pCO2

Turner Designs deployed a C-sense pCO2 sensor alongside the PMEL Carbon mooring at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco. Intentions were to see how well the C-sense tracked pCO2 changes in San Francisco Bay . This unique opportunity was granted by Mary Miller, a science writer and the director for the Exploratorium’s partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. C-sense data were continuously logged using a Turner Designs DataBank Logger. The picture below shows the PMEL Carbon Buoy alongside the Exploratorium Museum located on the Embarcadero’s Pier 15 in San Francisco. This mooring is a first for the PMEL Carbon program in terms of the proximity to shore.

Plotted below is a time series of data collected from C-sense along with water levels from San Francisco Bay during the deployment which started 9/21/2015 and continued uninterrupted through 10/6/2015. There is a strong correlation between the two, suggesting tides are the most significant driver of pCO2 variability in the bay and the near shore environment. Future work with the Exploratorium will aim to determine the local variability of pCO2 within the immediate area of the PMEL mooring, ensuring that the site is properly representative of the natural variability of pCO2 in SF Bay.

Author: Luke Beatman

Institution: Turner Designs

San Francisco Bay, CA USA