Description: During the 1990s, ocean sampling expeditions were carried out as part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), and the Ocean Atmosphere Carbon Exchange Study (OACES). Subsequently, a group of U.S. scientists synthesized the data into easily usable and readily available products. This collaboration is known as the Global Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP). Results were merged into a common format data set, segregated by ocean. For comparison purposes, each ocean data set includes a small number of high‐quality historical cruises. The data were subjected to rigorous quality control procedures to eliminate systematic data measurement biases. The calibrated 1990s data were used to estimate anthropogenic CO2, potential alkalinity, CFC watermass ages, CFC partial pressure, bomb‐produced radiocarbon, and natural radiocarbon. These quantities were merged into the measured data files. The data were used to produce objectively gridded property maps at a 1° resolution on 33 depth surfaces chosen to match existing climatologies for temperature, salinity, oxygen, and nutrients. The mapped fields are interpreted as an annual mean distribution in spite of the inaccuracy in that assumption. Both the calibrated data and the gridded products are available from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. Here we describe the important details of the data treatment and the mapping procedure, and present summary quantities and integrals for the various parameters.

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: As a response to public demand for a well-documented, quality controlled, publically available, global surface ocean carbon dioxide (CO2) data set, the international marine carbon science community developed the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT). The first SOCAT product is a collection of 6.3 million quality controlled surface CO2 data from the global oceans and coastal seas, spanning four decades (1968–2007). The SOCAT gridded data presented here is the second data product to come from the SOCAT project. Recognizing that some groups may have trouble working with millions of measurements, the SOCAT gridded product was generated to provide a robust, regularly spaced CO2 fugacity (fCO2) product with minimal spatial and temporal interpolation, which should be easier to work with for many applications. Gridded SOCAT is rich with information that has not been fully explored yet (e.g., regional differences in the seasonal cycles), but also contains biases and limitations that the user needs to recognize and address (e.g., local influences on values in some coastal regions).

Description: The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT), an activity of the international marine carbon research community, provides access to synthesis and gridded fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) products for the surface oceans. Version 2 of SOCAT is an update of the previous release (version 1) with more data (increased from 6.3 million to 10.1 million surface water fCO2 values) and extended data coverage (from 1968–2007 to 1968–2011). The quality control criteria, while identical in both versions, have been applied more strictly in version 2 than in version 1. The SOCAT website (http://www.socat.info/) has links to quality control comments, metadata, individual data set files, and synthesis and gridded data products. Interactive online tools allow visitors to explore the richness of the data. Applications of SOCAT include process studies, quantification of the ocean carbon sink and its spatial, seasonal, year-to-year and longerterm variation, as well as initialisation or validation of ocean carbon models and coupled climate-carbon models.

Description: The global ocean is a significant sink for anthropogenic carbon (C-ant), absorbing roughly a third of human CO2 emitted over the industrial period. Robust estimates of the magnitude and variability of the storage and distribution of C-ant in the ocean are therefore important for understanding the human impact on climate. In this synthesis we review observational and model-based estimates of the storage and transport of C-ant in the ocean. We pay particular attention to the uncertainties and potential biases inherent in different inference schemes. On a global scale, three data-based estimates of the distribution and inventory of C-ant are now available. While the inventories are found to agree within their uncertainty, there are considerable differences in the spatial distribution. We also present a review of the progress made in the application of inverse and data assimilation techniques which combine ocean interior estimates of C-ant with numerical ocean circulation models. Such methods are especially useful for estimating the air-sea flux and interior transport of C-ant, quantities that are otherwise difficult to observe directly. However, the results are found to be highly dependent on modeled circulation, with the spread due to different ocean models at least as large as that from the different observational methods used to estimate C-ant. Our review also highlights the importance of repeat measurements of hydro-graphic and biogeochemical parameters to estimate the storage of C-ant on decadal timescales in the presence of the variability in circulation that is neglected by other approaches. Data-based C-ant estimates provide important constraints on forward ocean models, which exhibit both broad similarities and regional errors relative to the observational fields. A compilation of inventories of C-ant gives us a "best" estimate of the global ocean inventory of anthropogenic carbon in 2010 of 155 +/- 31 PgC (+/- 20% uncertainty). This estimate includes a broad range of values, suggesting that a combination of approaches is necessary in order to achieve a robust quantification of the ocean sink of anthropogenic CO2.

Description: Global ship-based programs, with highly accurate, full water column physical and biogeochemical observations repeated decadally since the 1970s, provide a crucial resource for documenting ocean change. The ocean, a central component of Earth’s climate system, is taking up most of Earth’s excess anthropogenic heat, with about 19% of this excess in the abyssal ocean beneath 2,000 m, dominated by Southern Ocean warming. The ocean also has taken up about 27% of anthropogenic carbon, resulting in acidification of the upper ocean. Increased stratification has resulted in a decline in oxygen and increase in nutrients in the Northern Hemisphere thermocline and an expansion of tropical oxygen minimum zones. Southern Hemisphere thermocline oxygen increased in the 2000s owing to stronger wind forcing and ventilation. The most recent decade of global hydrography has mapped dissolved organic carbon, a large, bioactive reservoir, for the first time and quantified its contribution to export production (∼20%) and deep-ocean oxygen utilization. Ship-based measurements also show that vertical diffusivity increases from a minimum in the thermocline to a maximum within the bottom 1,500 m, shifting our physical paradigm of the ocean’s overturning circulation.

Description: This study presents basin-wide anthropogenic CO2 inventory estimates for the Indian Ocean based on measurements from the World Ocean Circulation Experiment/Joint Global Ocean Flux Study global survey. These estimates employed slightly modified ΔC* and time series techniques originally proposed by Gruber et al. [1996] and Wallace [1995], respectively. Together, the two methods yield the total oceanic anthropogenic CO2 and the carbon increase over the past 2 decades. The highest concentrations and the deepest penetrations of anthropogenic carbon are associated with the Subtropical Convergence at around 30° to 40°S. With both techniques, the lowest anthropogenic CO2 column inventories are observed south of 50°S. The total anthropogenic CO2 inventory north of 35°S was 13.6±2 Pg C in 1995. The inventory increase since GEOSECS (Geochemical Ocean Sections Program) was 4.1±1 Pg C for the same area. Approximately 6.7±1 Pg C are stored in the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean, giving a total Indian Ocean inventory of 20.3 ±3 Pg C for 1995. These estimates are compared to anthropogenic CO2 inventories estimated by the Princeton ocean biogeochemistry model. The model predicts an Indian Ocean sink north of 35°S that is only 0.61–0.68 times the results presented here; while the Southern Ocean sink is nearly 2.6 times higher than the measurement-based estimate. These results clearly identify areas in the models that need further examination and provide a good baseline for future studies of the anthropogenic inventory.