Abstract
Abstract. 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.
Highlights
In the late 1990s attempts were made by the SCOR-IOC (Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission) committee on ocean CO2, the 6 forerunner of the IOCCP (International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project), to assemble a comprehensive, well documented, publicly available data set of surface ocean f CO2 for the global oceans and coastal seas
Pfeil and Olsen streamlined and expanded this effort within the European Union (EU) project CarboOcean from 2005 onwards. They compiled public surface ocean CO2 data held at Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), PANGAEA – Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science (an International Council for Science (ICSU) World Data Center, formerly the World Data Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, WDC-MARE) and elsewhere into a common format f CO2 database based on the recommended formats for data and metadata reporting (IOCCP, 2004)
Seven SOP criteria need to be fulfilled for a cruise flag A or B in Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT): 1. The data are based on xCO2 analysis, not f CO2 calculated from other carbon parameters, such as pH, alkalinity or dissolved inorganic carbon; 2
Summary
The net absorption of CO2 by the oceans, caused by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations since the industrial revolution, has been responsible for removing CO2 equivalent to approximately 50 % of the fossil fuel and cement manufacturing emissions or about 30 % of the total anthropogenic emissions, including land use change (Sabine et al, 2004). In the late 1990s attempts were made by the SCOR-IOC (Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission) committee on ocean CO2, the 6 forerunner of the IOCCP (International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project), to assemble a comprehensive, well documented, publicly available data set of surface ocean f CO2 for the global oceans and coastal seas. Pfeil and Olsen streamlined and expanded this effort within the EU project CarboOcean from 2005 onwards They compiled public surface ocean CO2 data held at CDIAC, PANGAEA – Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science (an International Council for Science (ICSU) World Data Center, formerly the World Data Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, WDC-MARE) and elsewhere into a common format f CO2 database based on the recommended formats for data and metadata reporting (IOCCP, 2004). A series of meetings was held in which SOCAT gradu- products in SOCAT (Table 2). ally took shape and in which the regional groups coordinated their work (Table 1) (IOCCP, 2007, 2008, 2009a, b, 2010a, b)
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