New Tools for Dissolved Oxygen, Fluorescence and Turbidity Sensors Testing and Intercomparison

The protection and management of the oceans require a comprehensive understanding of processes and conditions that affect the state of the marine environment. Long term in-situ monitoring of bio-geo-chemical properties of the ocean is a challenging task, not only due to "hostile" marine environment, but also due to the instruments accuracy and precision needed to obtain useful data for processes analysis as well as for assimilation into forecasting models. Thus, it is fundamental to develop and test comparison and validation tools for assessing the performance of these type of sensors at each centre managing ocean observing systems. To this aim, two different set-ups to test and calibrate multiple different dissolved oxygen and fluo-turbidity sensors at the same time have been developed and tested at the HCMR calibration facility in Crete within the framework of the European Commission project JERICO.