Week 6 - More CDOM Research and Data Analysis

Up until last week I made many trips to the OGI library and was busy researching CDOM. One of the most interesting things I learned is that CDOM affects the level of atmospheric oxygen. It does so by limiting the photosynthesis process that occurs underwater, as it limits the amount of light that penetrates through to the organisms and plants underneath that need light to produce oxygen. I found this interesting because I never thought that CDOM would have such a large effect on the atmosphere, let alone have a direct impact on human life.

Last week, I started working on analyzing CDOM data based on the data collected by the Saturn observation network. I started out with just analyzing CDOM time series to see how the measurements vary from location to location in the observation network. Then, I started comparing the CDOM levels to other variables, particularly Salinity. As background research suggested, I found an inverse correlation between CDOM and salinity. This relationship is evident because the salinity level is high in the deepsea while the CDOM level is close to 0 ppb, and vice versa.