Dear all,

A little bit more than 4 weeks to go, the 1st ICOS OTC inter-comparison will start. We were working hard to make this finally happen and we want to thank you for your support of this important exercise. Here we send you important information and ask you to read carefully through the following points. Not every point might apply to everyone, but still… If you have further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Where do we stand:
Due to the Corona pandemic we were forced to postpone the exercise to 2021 and to run all instruments by a small core team on site. We will have 29 pCO2 instruments: buoy systems, submersible systems and equilibrator based underway systems. Some will be installed in pairs so that we will have 17 different instrument types. The systems will be set up and ran by the core team: Thanos Gkritzalis (VLIZ, Ostend/Belgium), Vlad Macovei (Hereon, Geesthacht/Germany), Steve Jones (University of Bergen, Norway) and me.

Setup:
We will start with setting up the instruments on 17 June to allow 10 days for set-up. During this period, we might contact you with more specific questions regarding the sensor. We plan to have a test run with all instruments on 25/26 June

Contacts during set-up and exercise:
We ask every group that sent us an instrument to name a first and second contact (including the times where we can reach them in UTC) that we can approach during set-up and operation in case we need urgently input from your side:
    - technical issues: First contact (available from x to y UTC), Second contact (available from x to y UTC)
    - data issues: First contact (available from x to y UTC), Second contact (available from x to y UTC)
We can be in contact via email, text messaging (like Whatsapp) or video calls. We are equipped to “be your eyes and hands” and trouble-shoot directly at the instrument.

Pictures from Marine Station Ostend (MSO):
On the ICOS OTC web site you can find more pictures of the ongoing setup at the MSO in Ostend/Belgium: https://otc.icos-cp.eu/node/145. We will upload more pictures over time.

Shipping:
Please don’t forget to send your instruments in time and let us know when you sent them. The shipping details can be found here: https://otc.icos-cp.eu/node/150

Quick Start Guides:
Some groups were very active with the preparation of the Quick Start Guides. We are still in the process of reviewing them. But they will be very helpful for the setup period as we will heavily rely on them. However, this gives us a good chance to update the QSG as we go. If you have not sent any, yes, please consider doing it by 10 June, as they are essential for our set-up time (17 to 26 June).

Webinars:
The inter-comparison will start and end with open access, free to attend webinars (60 to 90 minutes length). The first one (25 June, 13:00 UTC) will focus on the rational, scope and details of the activity, while the second one (12 July, 13:00 UTC) will focus on initial results and highlights from the 2 weeks. More information will follow on the OTC website and through IOCCP.

Daily meetings:
We will hold daily meetings with everyone who's instrument is participating using Zoom. During these meetings we will discuss the previous 24 hours’ exercise and discuss results of all instrumentation. These meetings will allow us to discuss findings as well as next steps. We will also allow time for discussions in smaller (instrument specific) groups.

Documentation:
We will create instrument specific folders on the ICOS cloud for every instrument. In these folders you will find
- a file that documents all of our work with respect to this instrument (lab book),
- a folder where you can upload any information we should have,
- a folder with the data from the specific instrument,
- a folder with metadata information.
The folders are password protected, so that they are specific for each group.

Twitter:
We will tweet about the inter-comparison under the hashtag #pco2compare.

It would have been great to see you all in Belgium. But we are excited and looking very much forward to the inter-comparison.
Best wishes on behalf of the organizing group,

Tobias

-- 
Dr. Tobias Steinhoff
Senior Engineer, ICOS OTC
NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research
Jahnebakken 5
NO-5007 Bergen, Norway
Phone: +49 1522 4512785

E-mail: tost@norceresearch.no