Atlantic Carbon Synthesis Groups

This project was initiated at the IOCCP-CarboOcean Initial Atlantic Ocean Carbon Synthesis Meeting, June 28-30 2006, Laugarvatn, Iceland. The meeting brought together 23 participants from 9 countries with expertise ranging from ship-based hydrography and carbon measurements, physical oceanography, surface pCO2 variability, CFC and tracer measurements, O2 on profiling floats, modeling, and data synthesis and management.  During the meeting it was decided that the CARINA (Carbon in the Atlantic) data synthesis should be extended to include the Arctic and Southern Oceans. The Workshop participants developed three coordinated synthesis groups and a common data module: 

• North Atlantic working group (lead: Are Olsen, Bjerknes Center for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway)

• Atlantic working group (lead: Toste Tanhua, IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany)

• South Atlantic / Southern Ocean (lead: Mario Hoppema, AWI, Bremerhaven, Germany)

• Data: Robert Key, Princeton University, USA

These groups met three times after the Iceland meeting; in Kiel, Germany (March 2007), Delmenhorst, Germany (December 2007) and Paris, France (June 2008) to tune the methodology and evaluate the results. Further more, an interactive website was developed that allowed the different investigators to upload and view results of the synthesis.

By the end of 2008, the CARINA secondary quality control was finalized. After this the individual cruise data in WOCE exchange format, as well as three merged data products, were published on CDIAC (link http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/CARINA/Carina_inv.html) and on CCHDO (link http://whpo.ucsd.edu/project_carina/). In addition to these data, an ODV collection and matlab routines to facilitate reading the data was added to the CIDAC site.

The documentation of the CARINA project is primarily done through 20 articles published in a special issue in Earth System Science Data (ESSD, link http://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/special_issue2.html). This special issue will be finalized by summer of 2010.

For more information, including data, working documents, and follow-up activities, please visit the CARINA Web-site page at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/CARINA/Carina_inv.html

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North Pacific Carbon Synthesis Groups

This synthesis activity was launched with a workshop entitled “Understanding North Pacific Carbon-Cycle Changes: A Data Synthesis and Modeling Workshop”, held in Seattle in June 2004. This workshop was sponsored by NOAA's Global Carbon Cycle Program with additional support from the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES), The Global Carbon Project (GCP), and the University of Washington Program on Climate Changes (UWPCC).

This workshop addressed 3 primary themes:

1. How are air-sea CO2 fluxes in the North Pacific affected by different modes of variability?

2. How and why are the North Pacific distribution patterns of carbon, nutrients and oxygen in the water column changing with time?

3. What are the requirements for detecting a climate change signal in the North Pacific carbon cycle?

A special section of the Journal of Geophysical Research entitled “North Pacific Carbon Cycle Variability and Climate Change” was published in 2006 (C. Sabine and N. Gruber, guest editors, Introduction doi:10.1029/2006JC003532).

In 2005 this international collaboration was further formalized with the formation of the PICES Section on Carbon and Climate. The CC-S terms of reference (adopted November 2005, revised April 2008) are to

1. Coordinate and encourage ongoing and planned national and international syntheses of carbon cycle research studies in the North Pacific and, where necessary and appropriate, for the larger Pacific basin;

2. Ensure effective two-way communication with other international scientific groups that have a responsibility for the coordination of ocean carbon studies, such as the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP), CLIVAR/CO2 Repeat Hydrography and the SOLAS/IMBER implementation group for carbon research;

3. Review the existing information on carbon cycling in the North Pacific, including anthropogenic carbon, the biological pump, impacts of ocean acidification on marine biota, and possible feedbacks to atmospheric greenhouse gases; identify gaps in our knowledge, and make prioritized recommendations for future research;

4. Periodically review the status of the methodology of CO2 measurements, including the preparation of standards and reference materials, and advise on inter-calibration and quality control procedures;

5. Identify suitable data sets on the oceanic CO2 system in the Pacific region as they become available, and recommend the mechanisms of data and information exchange;

6. Carry out and publish (in the refereed literature) basin-scale syntheses of carbon cycling in the North Pacific, including new data whenever appropriate, and encourage scientific interpretation of these evolving data sets;

7. Organize symposia, workshops, or Annual Meeting sessions on the carbon cycle, ocean acidification, and climate studies in the North Pacific.

Pursuant to the TOR (particularly 1 and 6), a major data synthesis effort is now underway. This project is known as PACIFICA and is coordinated by M. Ishii (Japan) and R. Key (United States). This project has adopted many of the methodologies developed by CARINA in the Atlantic and is expected to be completed in early 2011.

For more information about the synthesis, including protocols, publications, models, data and metadata, please visit the workshop Web-site at http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/NP/ .

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