Autonomous sensors for gravitational carbon flux in the ocean are critically needed, because of uncertainties in the projected response of the biological carbon pump (BCP) to climate change, and the proposed, engineered acceleration of the BCP to sequester carbon dioxide in the ocean. Optical sediment trap (OST) sensors directly sense fluxes of sinking particles in a manner that is independent of, and complementary to, other autonomous, sensor-derived estimates of BCP fluxes. However, limited intercalibrations of OSTs with traditional sediment traps and uncharacterized, potential biases have limited their broad adoption. A global field data set spanning three orders of magnitude in carbon flux was compiled and used to develop empirical models predicting particulate organic carbon flux from OST observations, and intercalibrating different sensor designs. These data provided valuable constraints on the uncertainty in the predicted carbon flux and showed a quantitative, theoretically consistent relationship between observations from OSTs with collimated and diffuse optical geometries. While not designed for this purpose, commercial beam transmissometers have been used as OSTs, so two models were developed quantifying the biases arising from the transmissometer's housing geometry and optical beam diameter. Finally, an algorithm for the quality control of beam transmissometer-derived OST data was optimized using sensitivity tests. The results of this study support the expansion of OST-based gravitational carbon flux measurements and provide a framework for interpretation of OST measurements alongside other gravitational particle flux observations. These findings also suggest key features that should be included in designs of future, purpose-built OST sensors.

中文翻译：

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一种新的全局光学沉积物捕集器校准

由于生物碳泵（BCP）对气候变化的预计响应以及拟议的 BCP 加速以封存海洋中的二氧化碳的预期响应存在不确定性，因此迫切需要用于海洋重力碳通量的自主传感器。光学沉积物捕集器 (OST) 传感器直接感测下沉颗粒的通量，其方式独立于其他自主的传感器衍生的 BCP 通量估计，并与之互补。然而，OST 与传统沉积物捕集器的相互校准有限以及未表征的潜在偏差限制了其广泛采用。编译了碳通量跨越三个数量级的全球现场数据集，并用于开发经验模型，根据 OST 观测预测颗粒有机碳通量，并相互校准不同的传感器设计。这些数据对预测碳通量的不确定性提供了有价值的限制，并显示了具有准直和漫射光学几何形状的 OST 观测结果之间定量的、理论上一致的关系。虽然商业光束传输计并非为此目的而设计，但已被用作 OST，因此开发了两个模型来量化传输计外壳几何形状和光束直径产生的偏差。最后，使用灵敏度测试优化了光束传输计导出的 OST 数据的质量控制算法。这项研究的结果支持扩展基于 OST 的重力碳通量测量，并为解释 OST 测量以及其他重力粒子通量观测提供了框架。这些发现还提出了未来专用 OST 传感器设计中应包含的关键功能。