Welcome to the Sea of Salinometry

” He divided the sea,
and caused them to pass through;
and he made the waters to stand as a heap”
Pss 78

This website is about the laboratory measurements of seawater salinity – the most interesting and fundamental physical property of the seawater. Despite the great progress achieved for the last 50 years in the development of the in situ measuring salinity CTD systems, laboratory salinometers are still in service by oceanographers. Nowadays these instruments play the “first fiddle” in the oceanographic measurements, keeping metrological duties in transferring standard of conductivity and controlling the quality of data of the CTD systems.

The practical salinity of samples becomes a sophisticated deriving physical parameter, which provides the highest precision method in oceanography measurements.
I have been working for many years in the field of oceanography instrumentation and metrology and this is my experience I want to share.

I couldn’t find any precise definition of the word SALINOMETRY anywhere, but this word is widely used on oceanographic research vessels together with more jargon phrase “do salts“. So, I tried to give it meaning by myself:

Salinometry – is the process of the laboratory measurements of the practical salinity of seawater samples with a salinometer.

      Since the subject of salinometry is the seawater, I will dwell on such topics as the salinity and other physical parameters of the seawater, history of the measurement of salinity and common methods in oceanographic practice. Also, recently I included information about modern CTD systems, which are the true “workhorses” of oceanographers. I hope that some notes and miscellaneous information about all aspects connected with seawater salinity will also be interesting. If you have any questions, suggestions, prepositions and interesting information to share please be free to contact me.

      When I first started studying the history of this subject I felt real excitement from this great example of world scientific cooperation. This is a remarkable story about solving unsolved problems, counting uncounted matter, finding the path in the world oceanographic community for the unification of measuring one of the most important oceanographic parameters.
      I dedicate this website with great respect to Thomas Dauphinee, a remarkable engineer and scientist, who worked in the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa. The man who developed the first industrial high precision laboratory salinometer AUTOSAL (often called “the Canadian salinometer”), which for 40 years and still nowadays keeps the highest standard in oceanography, the man who introduced one of the basic relationships for the Practical Salinity Scale 1978 and the man who received no awards from oceanographic community for his important contribution to science and great work in this field. He is worth his salt. Thanks, Tim!