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Measurement · Nutrients & Chemistry · µmol/L

Bottle phosphate

NERC P01 PHOSZZXXP06 units UPOX umol/Lkey btl_phosphate series btl_phosphate
144,164
values
0
flagged
8,413
sampling events
1993–2026
years
1
dataset
1–3,510 m
depth
Jan · Feb · Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep · Oct · Nov
seasons
What

O4P3− · phosphate(3−) · 94.970 g/mol · CHEBI:18367

Concentration of phosphate per unit volume of the water column. Phosphate may be expressed in terms of mass or quantity of substance.

How
rosette bottle

Seal Analytical continuous-flow AutoAnalyzer 3 (AA3)

820 nm

Bottle sampling methods on calcofi.org ↗

How do the eutrophication and pollution impact ocean productivity and water quality?

CalCOFI holds 144,164 values of it from 8,413 sampling events in one dataset, 1993–2026, from the surface to 3,510 m. At 10–50 m it has fallen 0.03 per decade since 1993.R Phosphate is one of the two fertilisers a bloom cannot do without; off Southern California it has risen in the lower pycnocline as oxygen fell, and the nitrogen-to-phosphorus ratio of the water that feeds upwelling has shifted with it.C

other ways to say why · 4
  • authored Where phosphate is high at the surface, deep water has arrived recently and little has yet grown on it. needs a citation before it can be the pick
  • GOOS asks How do the eutrophication and pollution impact ocean productivity and water quality? source
  • GOOS asks Is the biomass of the ocean changing? source
  • Wikipedia A phosphate is an anion, salt, functional group or ester derived from a phosphoric acid. It most commonly means orthophosphate, a derivative of orthophosphoric acid, a.k.a. Phosphate · CC BY-SA 4.0 · rev. 1376284687

The measurement

Measured in
i

One row per series, one cell per year, darker with more values — the same strip the front door draws per dataset and a species page draws per taxon. Each row is one dataset's own measurement_type; the label is written once, in the title above.

  • CTD Cast Files 144,164 values · 8,413 sampling events · 1993–2026 · 1–3,510 m · 109 grid cells · 121 cruises
    series btl_phosphate · source column po4 no flag at this grain

The structure

O4P3− phosphate(3−) CHEBI:18367 · 94.970 g/mol · the_thing

ChEBI: “A phosphate ion that is the conjugate base of hydrogenphosphate.” · RDKit 2026.03.6 from the ChEBI molfile, in the page’s ink · CC BY 4.0. ChEBI’s roles are never shown.

How it is measured

CTD Cast Files · rosette bottle
Seal Analytical continuous-flow AutoAnalyzer 3 (AA3)

A modification of Bernhardt and Wilhelm: acidic ammonium molybdate forms phosphomolybdic acid, reduced by dihydrazine sulfate to a blue compound, heated to about 55C to develop color, and read in a 10 mm flow cell. (calcofi.org Bottle sampling methods)

no flag at this grain
Bottle sampling methods on calcofi.org ↗

Why it matters

The familiar scale
i

Bars are each series' 5th–95th percentile, the line its minimum to maximum, the ring its median; the marks are metadata/measurement_scale.csv's, each hovering to its own source.

The record’s own history
i

Deeper than the climatology reaches: 52 values at 1000–2000 m, 20 values at 2000+ m have no normal to depart from, because the release’s climatology stops at its deepest built bin. Carrying it to the bottom is one argument of build_climatology() and puts these bands on the page too.

Essential Ocean Variable
Nutrients

the GOOS specification sheet for this Essential Ocean Variable lists it, and asks

GOOS asks

  • How do the eutrophication and pollution impact ocean productivity and water quality?
  • Is the biomass of the ocean changing?

GOOS specification sheet ↗ · quoted, not copied

The record

Ways in
i

Read from measurements.json of release v2026.10.05, written at release by calcofi4db::build_measurements_catalog() beside taxa.json. The catalog's index is /measurements/; the JSON-LD on this page is a schema.org/DefinedTerm in the NERC P01 term set with a PropertyValue per series.

ExplorerExplorer · a depth section vs normaldb-query
ERDDAP · CTD Cast FilesCalCOFI's own server, the CTD Cast Files table constrained to this series
https://erddap.calcofi.io/erddap/tabledap/calcofi_ctd-cast.html?&measurement_type=%22btl_phosphate%22

By depth
i

Values per depth band at the release grain, one thin bar per series. The bands are the record's own (0-10 … 2000+ m).

By month
i

Values per calendar month, one row per series: CalCOFI's quarterly cruises show as peaks in the months the ships sail.

Range & quality

bounds0 … 10 µmol/Lobserved0 … 5.21 µmol/Lflagged0baselineclimatology ✓
details
bounds
The registry declares 0 … 10 µmol/L for btl_phosphate; a value outside it is dropped at the ingest (drop_out_of_bounds()).
observed
CTD Cast Files btl_phosphate 0 · median 1.41 · 5.21 µmol/L (5th–95th percentile 0.25–3.05)
flags
CTD Cast Files btl_phosphate carries no quality code at the release grain; qual_ok keeps all 144,164.
baseline
A monthly climatology exists for this measurement (the release's climatology table: 1993–2013, dataset × grid cell × calendar month × 10 m bin), so the Explorer can draw anomalies against it rather than values.

Related measurements
i

The same quantity from another platform or another kind of sample, each its own page and never merged into this one: a dataset's own bottle samples would count that dataset twice, an underway intake is not a cast, and a replicate is not a mean. The reason is the record's (related[].why).

  • Phosphate concentration phosphate · Hydrographic Bottle · 1949–2021 · 440,909 values · P01 PHOSZZXX the same quantity from the CTD files' own bottle samples — plausibly the same physical bottles, so merging them would count the bottle dataset twice

Cite

Cite the release; each dataset's own citation, licence and DOI are on its page — CTD Cast Files. The Explorer's Share → Cite writes it for the view you make.