Hi John,
In 30 years in oceanography I've never heard any mention of any doubt that it is, at least as far as the usual measurement techniques in oceanogrphy are concerned (polarographic electrodes, Winkler titration and optodes).
The labelling 'dissolved' originated in community usage - it's been referred to as dissolved oxygen or DO for as long as I can remember. Usage of 'molecular' is less common in my experience, but is obviously designed to explicitly exclude the oxygen in species like CO2, HCO3-, CO3--, SO4--. However, any oceanographer who talks about dissolved oxygen - or even just oxygen - is referring to molecular oxygen.
Cheers, Roy.
________________________________________
From: CF-metadata [cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of John Graybeal [graybeal at marinemetadata.org]
Sent: 17 May 2013 19:47
To: CF Metadata List
Subject: [CF-metadata] is molecular oxygen in seawater always dissolved?
Hi all,
I found an odd thing in one of the standard names, and I'm not sure if it's exactly right or I need another name.
For context: We (Marinexplore, new affiliation) are aggregating data from A Lot of different sources. So this question is not about one specific observation, but how to best represent all the observations we'll be working with.
The name is mole_concentration_of_dissolved_molecular_oxygen_in_sea_water. There is no equivalent name without "dissolved", and I am wondering if a mole concentration of molecular oxygen in sea water will always be dissolved? Or should I request a name without that in it? (In the original CF email from 2010 requesting this name "dissolved" did not appear, and it isn't clear from the history what motivated its inclusion.)
Thanks for your advice, and thanks to Alison for your research help.
John
---------------------------------------------------
John Graybeal
Senior Data Manager, Metadata and Semantics
T +1 (408) 675-5545
F +1 (408) 616-1626
skype: graybealski
Marinexplore
920 Stewart Drive
Sunnyvale, CA
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Received on Sat May 18 2013 - 03:30:25 BST
