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Measurement · Physical Oceanography · µmol/kg

DO sensor 1 (uncorrected)

NERC P01 DOXMZZXXP06 units KGUM umol/kgkey oxygen_umol_kg_1 series oxygen_umol_kg_1
671,055
values
1,396
flagged
i
1,396 of these 671,055 values (0.2 %) are flagged by their provider as questionable or bad. The Explorer, the climatology and its anomalies leave them out; do the same when you read the data yourself (cc_qual_ok_sql() in calcofi4r, qual_ok_sql() in calcofi4py).
9,361
sampling events
1993–2026
years
1
dataset
1–3,630 m
depth
Jan · Feb · Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep · Oct · Nov
seasons
What

O2 · dioxygen · 31.998 g/mol · CHEBI:15379

Concentration of dissolved oxygen per unit mass of the water column. Oxygen may be expressed in terms of mass, volume or quantity of substance.

How
CTD sensor

Sea-Bird SBE 43 oxygen sensor

CTD FAQ circa 2020 on calcofi.org ↗

How large are the ocean’s “dead zones” and how fast are they changing?

CalCOFI holds 671,055 values of it from 9,361 sampling events in one dataset, 1993–2026, from the surface to 3,630 m. At 200–500 m it has fallen 7.21 per decade since 1993.R Below the mixed layer off Southern California oxygen has fallen since the 1980s and the hypoxic boundary has risen toward the shelf, squeezing the habitat of fish and invertebrates.C

other ways to say why · 6
  • authored Oxygen is the balance of what the ocean takes in at the surface and what animals and bacteria use below; a warmer ocean holds less and mixes less, so it is losing oxygen. needs a citation before it can be the pick
  • authored Warming thins the oxygen the surface layer can hold, and the upper ocean has been losing it for decades across the North Pacific, not only here. needs a citation before it can be the pick
  • GOOS asks How large are the ocean’s “dead zones” and how fast are they changing? source
  • GOOS asks Is the biomass of the ocean changing? source
  • Wikipedia Hypoxia (environmental) source
  • Wikipedia Ocean deoxygenation is the reduction of the oxygen content in different parts of the ocean due to human activities. There are two areas where this occurs. Ocean deoxygenation · CC BY-SA 4.0 · rev. 1354922617

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 671,055 values · 9,361 sampling events · 1993–2026 · 1–3,630 m · 97 grid cells · 129 cruises
    series oxygen_umol_kg_1 · source column ox1u_m · flag column ox1q 1,396 flagged · 0.2 %

The structure

O2 dioxygen CHEBI:15379 · 31.998 g/mol · the_thing

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 · CTD sensor
Sea-Bird SBE 43 oxygen sensor

A Sea-Bird SBE 43 membrane oxygen sensor on the pumped CTD line, soaked at 10 m for a few minutes before the downcast so its temperature-dependent response stabilises; the raw sensor reading is then corrected against the Winkler-titrated bottle oxygens at that station (or averaged over the cruise). (calcofi.org CTD FAQ circa 2020)

flag ox1q1,396 flagged
CTD FAQ circa 2020 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: 3,200 values at 1000–2000 m, 3,237 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
Oxygen

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

GOOS asks

  • How large are the ocean’s “dead zones” and how fast are they changing?
  • Is the biomass of the ocean changing?

GOOS specification sheet ↗ · quoted, not copied

The record

Ways in
i

Read from measurements.json of release v2026.09.11, 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=%22oxygen_umol_kg_1%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 … 700 µmol/kgobserved0 … 635.7 µmol/kgflagged1,396baselineclimatology ✓
details
bounds
The registry declares 0 … 700 µmol/kg for oxygen_umol_kg_1; a value outside it is dropped at the ingest (drop_out_of_bounds()).
observed
CTD Cast Files oxygen_umol_kg_1 0 · median 110.5 · 635.7 µmol/kg (5th–95th percentile 16.89–254.3)
flags
CTD Cast Files oxygen_umol_kg_1 ox1q on 1,396 of 671,055 rows: 8 1,310 · 9 86; qual_ok keeps 669,659. The codes are this dataset's own vocabulary, uninterpreted.
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).

  • Bottle dissolved oxygen oxygen_btl_umol_kg · CTD Cast Files · 1993–2025 · 127,192 values · P01 DOXMZZXX the same quantity from the CTD files' own bottle samples — plausibly the same physical bottles, so merging them would count the bottle dataset twice
  • Dissolved oxygen (µmol/kg) oxygen_umol_kg · oxygen_umol_kg_ave_sta_corr · Hydrographic Bottle · CTD Cast Files · 1949–2025 · 1,317,091 values · P01 DOXMZZXX one sensor of the pair beside the mean the file publishes
  • DO sensor 2 (uncorrected) oxygen_umol_kg_2 · CTD Cast Files · 1999–2026 · 328,625 values · P01 DOXMZZXX the other sensor of the pair, logged alongside
  • Reported oxygen (pre-QC) r_oxygen_umol_kg · Hydrographic Bottle · 1949–2021 · 690,698 values · P01 DOXMZZXX the source's own reported value before its QC — this page is the QC'd twin

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.