State of the marine environment off South Africa: December 2007

Please note: 1. This report has not been peer-reviewed; 2. The conditions of use outlined in the report are superseded by the conditions specified by the License field in this metadata record; 3. The contact information included in the report is superseded by the contact information that can be found in the Responsible Parties field of this metadata record.This is the third in a series of informal biannual reports introduced in December 2006, intended to provide an overview of marine environmental conditions off South Africa. The reports are based on data from a variety of sources, including web sources, satellite sensors, the South African Weather Service, MCM's coastal and moored instruments and MCM's research cruises and inherent to all of these there is an inevitable lag between the time of data capture and the time when the data first become available for use. The lags are all different. For example, wind data from the Cape Point lighthouse is updated monthly, the moored temperature recorders are serviced every three months and the time series of satellite data are updated at irregular intervals resulting in lags which may be as long as a year or, in some cases, even several years. Therefore, while it is the aim that the environmental reports should reflect the conditions which prevailed over the months leading up to the reporting date, some out-of-date series are incorporated because they provide information on long-term trends which would otherwise not be available, but always with the intention of reducing the lag period as much as possible.With this issue of the report four additional and important environmental parameters have been introduced, in the form of (a)Wind data from the Quickscat satellite's scatterometer, (b) dissolved nutrients (nitrate, phosphate and silicate) concentrations, (c)zooplankton data from the Mossel Bay monitoring line and (d) primary production data from the West Coast. The scatterometer data not only provide wind information all along the coast but can also be used to calculate upwelling indices. The nutrient series are currently very much out of date and also only presented for St Helena Bay but it is an important addition considering the lack of marine chemistry in the preceding issues of the report and it is hoped that the situation will improve in the near future. The report has also suffered from a shortage of biological information in the past, hence the addition of the Mossel Bay zooplankton and west coast primary production, represents a significant improvement.

请注意：1. 本报告未经同行评审；2. 报告中概述的使用条件由本元数据记录中的许可证字段中指定的条件所取代；3. 报告中包含的联系方式已被本元数据记录中责任方字段中可查找到的联系方式所取代。本报告是自2006年12月推出的非正式半年报系列的第三期，旨在概述南非沿海的海洋环境状况。报告基于多种来源的数据，包括网络资源、卫星传感器、南非气象服务、MCM的海岸和系留仪器以及MCM的研究航行，所有这些数据都不可避免地存在从数据捕获时间到数据首次可供使用的时间之间的时滞，时滞各不相同。例如，开普敦灯塔的风数据每月更新一次，系留温度记录器每三个月维护一次，卫星数据的时间序列以不规律的时间间隔更新，导致时滞可能长达一年，在某些情况下甚至可能长达数年。因此，虽然目标是使环境报告反映报告日期前几个月内存在的条件，但为了获取可能否则无法获得的长趋势信息，仍将包含一些过时的系列，但始终旨在尽可能减少时滞期。在本期报告中，引入了四个额外的且重要的环境参数，包括（a）Quickscat卫星的散射计风数据，（b）溶解营养素（硝酸盐、磷酸盐和硅酸盐）浓度，（c）莫塞尔湾监测线的浮游动物数据和（d）西海岸初级生产数据。散射计数据不仅提供了整个海岸的风信息，还可以用于计算上升流指数。营养素系列目前严重过时，并且仅展示了圣赫勒拿湾的数据，但考虑到前几期报告中缺乏海洋化学信息，这是一个重要的补充，并期望在不久的将来情况将得到改善。此外，报告过去也因生物信息的短缺而受到影响，因此莫塞尔湾浮游动物和西海岸初级生产数据的增加，代表了一个显著的改进。