ALBERT

Description: The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis of quality-controlled fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) values for the global surface oceans and coastal seas with regular updates. Version 3 of SOCAT has 14.5 million fCO2 values from 3646 data sets covering the years 1957 to 2014. This latest version has an additional 4.4 million fCO2 values relative to version 2 and extends the record from 2011 to 2014. Version 3 also significantly increases the data availability for 2005 to 2013. SOCAT has an average of approximately 1.2 million surface water fCO2 values per year for the years 2006 to 2012. Quality and documentation of the data has improved. A new feature is the data set quality control (QC) flag of E for data from alternative sensors and platforms. The accuracy of surface water fCO2 has been defined for all data set QC flags. Automated range checking has been carried out for all data sets during their upload into SOCAT. The upgrade of the interactive Data Set Viewer allows better interrogation of the SOCAT data collection and rapid creation of high-quality figures for scientific presentations. Automated data upload has been launched for version 4 and will enable more frequent SOCAT releases in the future. High-profile scientific applications of SOCAT include quantification of the ocean sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide and its long-term variation, detection of ocean acidification, as well as evaluation of coupled-climate and ocean-only biogeochemical models. Users of SOCAT data products are urged to acknowledge the contribution of data providers, as stated in the SOCAT Fair Data Use Statement. This living data publication documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new version of the SOCAT data collection compared with previous publications of this data collection (Pfeil et al., 2013; Sabine et al., 2013; Bakker et al., 2014).

Description: The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis activity by the international marine carbon research community (〉100 contributors). SOCAT version 5 has 21.5 million quality-controlled, surface ocean fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) observations from 1957 to 2017 for the global oceans and coastal seas. Calibrated sensor data are also available. Automation allows annual, public releases. SOCAT data is discoverable, accessible and citable. SOCAT enables quantification of the ocean carbon sink and ocean acidification and evaluation of ocean biogeochemical models. SOCAT, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2017, represents a milestone in biogeochemical and climate research and in informing policy.

Description: Large benthic foraminifera (LBF) are prolific producers of calcium carbonate sediments in shallow, tropical environments that are being influenced by ocean acidification (OA). Two LBF species, Amphistegina gibbosa (Order Rotaliida) with low-Mg calcite tests and Archaias angulatus (Order Miliolida) with high-Mg calcite tests, were studied to assess the effects of pH 7.6 on oxygen and carbon isotopic fractionation between test calcite and ambient seawater. The delta 18O and delta 13C values of terminal chambers and of whole adult tests of both species after 6 weeks were not significantly different between pH treatments of 8.0 and 7.6. However, tests of juveniles produced during the 6-week treatments showed significant differences between delta 18O and delta 13C values from control (pH 8.0) when compared with the treatment (pH 7.6) for both species. Although each individual's growth was photographed and measured, difficulty in distinguishing and manually extracting newly precipitated calcite from adult specimens likely confounded any differences in isotopic signals. However, juvenile specimens that resulted from asexual reproduction that occurred during the experiments did not contain old carbonate that could confound the new isotopic signals. These data reveal a potential bias in the design of OA experiments if only adults are used to investigate changes in test chemistries. Furthermore, the results reaffirm that different calcification mechanisms in these two foraminiferal orders control the fractionation of stable isotopes in the tests and will reflect decreasing pH in seawater somewhat differently.