Robust Estimates of the Total Alkalinity From Satellite Oceanographic Data in the Global Ocean

Abstract

Total alkalinity (TA) is a key parameter to understand the dynamics of biogeochemical properties in the global ocean and the effects of climate change on ocean acidification, ocean carbon cycle, and carbonate chemistry. To date, global surface ocean distributions of TA were investigated using multiple regional regression approaches which require smoothening techniques due to severe boundary effects in different oceanic regions/basins across latitudes/longitudes. To reduce the uncertainties and produce spatially and temporally consistent TA products, a novel single linear regression (SLR) approach was developed in this study to estimate TA fields in the global surface ocean waters. The SLR formulation was derived using the continuous in-situ measurements of sea surface salinity (SSS) collected from the different oceans. The performance of the SLR was assessed using independent in-situ/satellite derived TA data and the results from three existing algorithms. In general, the SLR-based global surface ocean TA fields from both in-situ and satellite data agreed well with in-situ measured TA data with a mean relative error less than 1%, which is much lower compared to the error with the existing algorithms. Studies were also conducted to examine the spatiotemporal variability and trends in the global surface ocean climatology of SSS and TA fields in the context of current climate change impacts.

Keywords

• Total alkalinity
• sea surface salinity
• carbon chemistry
• global ocean
• satellite data