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System Status

DMAS release today, May 16, 2013, at 3pm.

Due to a software deployment today, some data services may be affected.

Reduced Data Availability from VENUS CODAR System Caused By Spring Freshet

The VENUS CODAR high-frequency radar system, which measures ocean currents in the Strait of Georgia, is returning reduced amounts of data at the moment. Frequently, no current vectors are being returned at all.

This appears to be the result of low salinity in the surface waters in the Strait, which in turn is the result of the high flow rates out of the Fraser River during the spring freshet. High-frequency radar waves travel best over highly conductive (salty) water; the effective range of high-frequency radar systems is greatly reduced over fresh water.

The range of radials from the Coal Terminal CODAR station appears to be reduced, particularly towards the north. The effect on the Iona CODAR station, though, appears to be much more dramatic. This is perhaps because the Iona CODAR antenna looks out not onto open water as the Coal Terminal antenna does, but onto mudflats that are exposed during much of the tidal cycle.

This is the first year of operation of the complete CODAR system, so it is unclear how long this situation will prevail. The system was first made operational in early August of last year. Although there will undoubtedly be variations in the freshet and its effects on the VENUS CODAR system from year to year, presumably the system will return to full functionality by August, and hopefully before then.

No Data from Meteorological Station on BC Ferries – update May 10

The Meteorological Station on BC Ferries Queen of Alberni (Vancouver – Nanaimo (Duke Point) route) stopped logging data on 2013-Apr-29 22:43:23 UTC. We are currently investigating the problem.

Update 2013-May-10
The Meteorological Station was restored on 2013-May-07, data are flowing again.

VENUS Maintenance Cruise April 28 – May 7, 2013

The VENUS team will be at sea between April 28 – May 7 for another maintenance and installation cruise.

Live Data applets on the homepage, video streams and data plots will not update regularly during this time. Some data may be unavailable from the VENUS Download Data page.

The team plans to:

- Recover and redeploy instrument systems in Saanich Inlet.
- Re-install the Delta Dynamics Laboratory platform in Strait of Georgia at 110m.
- Add the Seismic Liquefaction In-situ Penetrometer (SLIP) to the Delta Dynamics study area.
- Install new sensors and systems developed by ONCCEE at the Delta Dynamics and Strait of Georgia East study areas.
- Re-install the DFO’s Institute of Ocean Sciences Hydrophone array at Strait of Georgia East 170m.
- Deploy the Bottom Boundary Layer experiment in the Strait of Georgia Central 300m study area.

Due to the number of platforms being deployed during this cruise, it will take the ONC Data team more time to update all the data services on the VENUS website.

To follow the cruise and receive up to date information visit the dedicated website: Wiring the Abyss 2013

ONC System Outage 2013-April-24

There will be a brief system outage on April 24 2013 after 5:00pm PST. The ONC Systems team will be upgrading the firmware on our EMC storage array. You may experience problems logging in and registering on all ONC websites (NEPTUNE and VENUS) during this time. Thank you for your patience.

New and improved Data Products!

VENUS has released new and improved data products for stationary platforms:

* NEW: For all Seabird CTDs, we are now offering a selection of TEOS-10 variables including Absolute Salinity, Conservative Temperature, InSitu Density from Conservative Temperature and Sigma0 from Conservative Temperature. For more information on TEOS-10, please see http://www.teos-10.org/.

* NEW: For oxygen variables, we are now offering the calculated variables oxygen saturation and apparent oxygen utilization for devices that are piggybacked onto a Seabird CTD.

* IMPROVED: To address user requests regarding the date format in our csv files, we have changed the format from decimal day to IOS-8601 format. The new date format is of the form yyyy-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS.FFF.

Visit the Download Data page to try the new products.

Plugged conductivity cell in Saanich inlet VIP Study Area

Beginning at 04:16 UTC on April 1 2013, the Seabird CTD 16+ 6536 conductivity cell located on the Saanich Inlet VIP became plugged. The plug appeared to clear on April 5, 2013 at 06:50 UTC. All Conductivity and all derived data (salinity, density, sigma-T, sound speed) are flagged as bad for the duration of the plugged conductivity cell.

Seakeeper intake/pump issue. All water property data affected.

Beginning ~0000 UTC on March 30,2013, the Tsawwassen-Duke Point ferry water property data are suspect. The intake and/or pump to the seakeeper system appears to be malfunctioning and all data from devices that require water are affected. The affected devices include the device that measures dissolved oxygen (Aanderaa Optode 1416), temperature/conductivity/salinity (Seabird Thermosalinograph 17) and turbidity/chlorophyll/CDOM (Wetlabs ECO triplet BBFL2 787). We are monitoring the situation and hope to solve the issue soon. Thank you for your patience.

DMAS Code Release 2013-Mar-21

There will be a DMAS code release beginning at 14:30 today (2013-Mar-21). There may be brief data flow interruptions and some of our data services might be unavailable until the release is complete. Thank you for your patience.

Power Outage at IOS leads to a short data gap in Saanich Inlet data

There is a short data gap in all Saanich Inlet data streams due to to a power outage at IOS. The data are missing from 19:42 to 20:53 March 20, 2013.

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