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Adjusted Hydrography Optimal Interpolation (AHOI)
Project
Project code: TI-SF-08-PID1700
Contract period: 01.01.2015
- 31.12.2016
Purpose of research: Inventory & Assessment
AHOI (Adjusted Hydrography Optimal Interpolation) is a simple physical-statistical model developed in the working group 'Operational Observation Systems' of the Thünen Institute of Sea Fisheries to produce monthly gridded in situ hydrography through various decades. Special care is given to a high vertical resolution, in order to yield a good representation of the near-seabed hydrography due to its importance for marine ecosystems. As a case study we produced monthly maps of temperature and salinity in the North Sea from 1948 to 2013. This study has been published in Journal of Marine System. Ecology and fisheries studies related to climate change demand large amounts of gridded hydrography spanning a long period of time, like decades, with a relatively high sampling frequency, like months. Currently there is not a satisfactory product for such studies in the North Sea, at all depths, with high resolution and freely available to the scientific community. Our goal was to make the best use of available hydrographical data for ecosystem and fisheries studies on inter-annual to multi-decadal timescales and in the frame of climate change. AHOI's main steps are: 1. Vertical interpolation of hydrographical profiles on common depth levels; 2. Identification and removal of outliers by statistical trimming and a buddy-check based on Gauss-Markov or optimal interpolation (OI); 3. Mapping of hydrography using OI, independently for each variable (temperature and salinity) and for each depth level; 4. Adjustment of poor OI estimates with an harmonic reconstruction arising from the most reliable OI estimates; 5. Adjustment of the OI estimates for density stability based on the World Ocean Atlas methods;
Section overview
Subjects
- Marine fisheries
- Climate Change