ALBERT

Description: A well-documented, publicly available, global data set of surface ocean carbon dioxide (CO2) parameters has been called for by international groups for nearly two decades. The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) project was initiated by the international marine carbon science community in 2007 with the aim of providing a comprehensive, publicly available, regularly updated, global data set of marine surface CO2, which had been subject to quality control (QC). Many additional CO2 data, not yet made public via the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), were retrieved from data originators, public websites and other data centres. All data were put in a uniform format following a strict protocol. Quality control was carried out according to clearly defined criteria. Regional specialists performed the quality control, using state-of-the-art web-based tools, specially developed for accomplishing this global team effort. SOCAT version 1.5 was made public in September 2011 and holds 6.3 million quality controlled surface CO2 data points from the global oceans and coastal seas, spanning four decades (1968–2007). Three types of data products are available: individual cruise files, a merged complete data set and gridded products. With the rapid expansion of marine CO2 data collection and the importance of quantifying net global oceanic CO2 uptake and its changes, sustained data synthesis and data access are priorities.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Sutton, A. J., Feely, R. A., Maenner-Jones, S., Musielwicz, S., Osborne, J., Dietrich, C., Monacci, N., Cross, J., Bott, R., Kozyr, A., Andersson, A. J., Bates, N. R., Cai, W., Cronin, M. F., De Carlo, E. H., Hales, B., Howden, S. D., Lee, C. M., Manzello, D. P., McPhaden, M. J., Melendez, M., Mickett, J. B., Newton, J. A., Noakes, S. E., Noh, J. H., Olafsdottir, S. R., Salisbury, J. E., Send, U., Trull, T. W., Vandemark, D. C., & Weller, R. A. Autonomous seawater pCO(2) and pH time series from 40 surface buoys and the emergence of anthropogenic trends. Earth System Science Data, 11(1), (2019):421-439, doi:10.5194/essd-11-421-2019.

Description: Ship-based time series, some now approaching over 3 decades long, are critical climate records that have dramatically improved our ability to characterize natural and anthropogenic drivers of ocean carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake and biogeochemical processes. Advancements in autonomous marine carbon sensors and technologies over the last 2 decades have led to the expansion of observations at fixed time series sites, thereby improving the capability of characterizing sub-seasonal variability in the ocean. Here, we present a data product of 40 individual autonomous moored surface ocean pCO2 (partial pressure of CO2) time series established between 2004 and 2013, 17 also include autonomous pH measurements. These time series characterize a wide range of surface ocean carbonate conditions in different oceanic (17 sites), coastal (13 sites), and coral reef (10 sites) regimes. A time of trend emergence (ToE) methodology applied to the time series that exhibit well-constrained daily to interannual variability and an estimate of decadal variability indicates that the length of sustained observations necessary to detect statistically significant anthropogenic trends varies by marine environment. The ToE estimates for seawater pCO2 and pH range from 8 to 15 years at the open ocean sites, 16 to 41 years at the coastal sites, and 9 to 22 years at the coral reef sites. Only two open ocean pCO2 time series, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Hawaii Ocean Time-series Station (WHOTS) in the subtropical North Pacific and Stratus in the South Pacific gyre, have been deployed longer than the estimated trend detection time and, for these, deseasoned monthly means show estimated anthropogenic trends of 1.9±0.3 and 1.6±0.3 µatm yr−1, respectively. In the future, it is possible that updates to this product will allow for the estimation of anthropogenic trends at more sites; however, the product currently provides a valuable tool in an accessible format for evaluating climatology and natural variability of surface ocean carbonate chemistry in a variety of regions. Data are available at https://doi.org/10.7289/V5DB8043 and https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/ocads/oceans/Moorings/ndp097.html (Sutton et al., 2018).

Description: We gratefully acknowledge the major funders of the pCO2 and pH observations: the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Department of Commerce, including resources from the Ocean Observing and Monitoring Division of the Climate Program Office (fund reference number 100007298) and the Ocean Acidification Program. We rely on a long list of scientific partners and technical staff who carry out buoy maintenance, sensor deployment, and ancillary measurements at sea. We thank these partners and their funders for their continued efforts in sustaining the platforms that support these long-term pCO2 and pH observations, including the following institutions: the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System, the Caribbean Coastal Ocean Observing System, Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute, the Murdock Charitable Trust, the National Data Buoy Center, the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences, NOAA–Korean Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries Joint Project Agreement, the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, the Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (i.e., RAMA), the University of Washington, the US Integrated Ocean Observing System, and the Washington Ocean Acidification Center. The open ocean sites are part of the OceanSITES program of the Global Ocean Observing System and the Surface Ocean CO2 Observing Network. All sites are also part of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network. This paper is PMEL contribution number 4797.