(see also the posts on the home page, for latest information)
June 2017:
Our Town Hall (Toward a Standard, User-Friendly Chemical Speciation Model for Seawater and Estuarine Waters) at the AGU/ASLO 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting, see the item for February 2016, below, was followed up with two web-based surveys of user needs that attracted a total of 166 responses. The results are now being prepared for publication and dissemination, and will guide the development of user-friendly software for chemical speciation modelling.
April to July 2017:
Simon Clegg worked at the University of Gothenburg with WG 145 Chair David Turner to plan the experiments to be carried out at Scripps, LNE, PTB, NMIJ and GEOMAR starting later this year (see the item below). David has been documenting the current “state-of-the-science” Pitzer model of Tris buffer in seawater at 25°C. This will be the basis of our work on the statistics and uncertainty analysis needed to develop the traceability element of the speciation model.
Collaboration is also developing with Pavel Tischenko of the Pacific Oceanological Institute in Vladivostok. Pavel, who is now an Associate Member of WG 145, has expertise in Pitzer-based speciation modelling, and experiments using Harned Cells. He has measured the properties of solutions containing major components of the Tris buffers that we are currently working on.
March 2017:
We have begun a collaboration with Daniela Stoica of LNE (Laboratoire national de métrologie et d’essais, in Paris), Frank Bastkowski of PTB (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, in Braunschweig), and Igor Maksimov (National Metrology Institute of Japan, NMIJ) to develop a speciation model of the Tris (2-amino-2-hydroxymethyl-propane-1,3-diol) buffers in artificial seawater that are used to calibrate pH instrumentation. Their interest is in the “traceability” of pH measurements, and the development of reference standards. This model is now an intermediate goal of WG 145, and an important step towards the complete model of seawater. The three institutes will carry out Harned Cell measurements which, together with those of Andrew Dickson’s group, and enable us to produce a temperature and composition dependent model of the buffer solutions. Additional experiments will be carried out by Pablo Lodeiro at GEOMAR in Kiel. Pablo is a member of the group of Eric Achterberg.
January 2017:
The 3 year project of Simon Clegg, Andrew Dickson, and Heather Benway, “A Thermodynamic Chemical Speciation Model for the Oceans, Seas, and Estuaries“, supported by the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK and the National Science Foundation (USA) starts in November this year. Experiments will be carried out at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (by Andrew Dickson) and model development at the University of East Anglia (by Simon Clegg).
July 2016:
Working group members Simon Clegg, Andrew Dickson, and Heather Benway have submitted a proposal to NERC in the UK, entitled “A Thermodynamic Chemical Speciation Model for the Oceans, Seas, and Estuaries“. The 3 year project, if it receives funding, will involve both experiments and modelling and will help us achieve the goals of the Working Group.
May 2016:
Working group member Simon Clegg submitted a proposal “Traceable oceanic carbon cycle measurements TOCCMe” to the EU EMPIR research programme. The lead principal investigator was Daniela Stoica of Laboratoire de Métrologie et d’Essais (LNE) in Paris. (Note: although this proposal was not successful it led to the collaboration with three metrology institutes described in the entry for March 2017.
February 2016:
Working group members Sylvia Sander, David Turner, and Simon Clegg led a “Town Hall” at the AGU/ASLO 2016 Ocean Sciences meeting, entitled “Toward a Standard, User-Friendly Chemical Speciation Model for Seawater and Estuarine Waters“. At this event we engaged with the chemical oceanography community to understand their interests and needs.