Description: The marine iodine cycle has significant impacts on air quality and atmospheric chemistry. Specifically, the reaction of iodide with ozone in the top few micrometres of the surface ocean is an important sink for tropospheric ozone (a pollutant gas) and the dominant source of reactive iodine to the atmosphere. Sea surface iodide parameterisations are now being implemented in air quality models, but these are currently a major source of uncertainty. Relatively little observational data is available to estimate the global surface iodide concentrations, and this data has not hitherto been openly available in a collated, digital form. Here we present all available sea surface (〈20 m depth) iodide observations. The dataset includes values digitised from published manuscripts, published and unpublished data supplied directly by the originators, and data obtained from repositories. It contains 1342 data points, and spans latitudes from 70°S to 68°N, representing all major basins. The data may be used to model sea surface iodide concentrations or as a reference for future observations.

Description: Author Posting. © Oceanography Society, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 23, no. 3 (2010): 48-61, doi: 10.5670/oceanog.2010.23

Description: Since its inception in 1960, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) has been responsible for organizing and coordinating the scientific investigation of ocean carbon. Roger Revelle (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) first articulated the principal need for international and intergovernmental coordination to address global-scale problems such as climate change when IOC was first developed. Regional to global-scale carbon studies started in earnest with the International Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE) and Geochemical Ocean Sections Study (GEOSECS) programs in the 1970s, but they were hampered by technological barriers that limited both the precision of carbon system measurements and the greater sampling frequency needed for a comprehensive global view. In 1979, IOC established the Committee on Climate Change and the Ocean (CCCO) with Revelle as Chair. CCCO called for a carbon observation program and sampling strategy that could determine the global oceanic CO2 inventory to an accuracy of 10–20 petagrams of carbon (Pg C). Perfection of the coulometric analysis technique of total dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in seawater by Ken Johnson (University of Rhode Island) and introduction of certified reference materials for DIC and alkalinity by Andrew Dickson (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) made such a study possible. The first global survey of ocean CO2 was carried out under the joint sponsorship of IOC and the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) in the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) and the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) in the 1990s. With these programs and underway pCO2 measuring systems on research vessels and ships of opportunity, ocean carbon data grew exponentially, reaching about a million total measurements by 2002 when Taro Takahashi (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) and others provided the first robust mapping of surface ocean CO2. Using a new approach developed by Nicolas Gruber (ETH Zürich) and colleagues with JGOFS-WOCE and other synthesized data sets, one of this article’s authors (Sabine) with a host of coauthors estimated that the total accumulation of anthropogenic CO2 between 1800 and 1994 was 118 ± 19 Pg C, just within the uncertainty goals set by JGOFS and IOC prior to the global survey. Today, ocean carbon activities are coordinated through the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP). Ocean carbon measurements now accumulate at a rate of over a million measurements per year—matching the total number achieved over the first three decades of ocean carbon studies. IOCCP is actively working to combine these data into uniform data sets that the community can use to better understand ocean carbon uptake and storage. The problem of ocean acidification caused by uptake of anthropogenic CO2 is now a major target of IOC and IOCCP.

Description: IOC’s ocean carbon activities are funded through IOC and SCOR, with major financial support provided by the US National Science Foundation through a grant to UNESCO-IOC (OCE-0715161) and a grant to the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (OCE-0608600) for IOCCP. The activities also benefit from generous in-kind contributions from NOAA and national carbon programs in Japan and the EU.

Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Lin, Y., Moreno, C., Marchetti, A., Ducklow, H., Schofield, O., Delage, E., Meredith, M., Li, Z., Eveillard, D., Chaffron, S., & Cassar, N. Decline in plankton diversity and carbon flux with reduced sea ice extent along the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Nature Communications, 12(1), (2021): 4948, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25235-w.

Description: Since the middle of the past century, the Western Antarctic Peninsula has warmed rapidly with a significant loss of sea ice but the impacts on plankton biodiversity and carbon cycling remain an open question. Here, using a 5-year dataset of eukaryotic plankton DNA metabarcoding, we assess changes in biodiversity and net community production in this region. Our results show that sea-ice extent is a dominant factor influencing eukaryotic plankton community composition, biodiversity, and net community production. Species richness and evenness decline with an increase in sea surface temperature (SST). In regions with low SST and shallow mixed layers, the community was dominated by a diverse assemblage of diatoms and dinoflagellates. Conversely, less diverse plankton assemblages were observed in waters with higher SST and/or deep mixed layers when sea ice extent was lower. A genetic programming machine-learning model explained up to 80% of the net community production variability at the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Among the biological explanatory variables, the sea-ice environment associated plankton assemblage is the best predictor of net community production. We conclude that eukaryotic plankton diversity and carbon cycling at the Western Antarctic Peninsula are strongly linked to sea-ice conditions.

Description: This work is supported by NSF OPP-1643534 to N.C., NSF OPP-1341479 to A.M., and NSF PLR-1440435 to H.D. and O.S. (Palmer LTER).

Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Jakuba, R. W., Williams, T., Neill, C., Costa, J. E., McHorney, R., Scott, L., Howes, B. L., Ducklow, H., Erickson, M., & Rasmussen, M. Water quality measurements in Buzzards Bay by the Buzzards Bay Coalition Baywatchers Program from 1992 to 2018. Scientific Data, 8(1), 2021: 76, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-00856-4.

Description: The Buzzards Bay Coalition’s Baywatchers Monitoring Program (Baywatchers) collected summertime water quality information at more than 150 stations around Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts from 1992 to 2018. Baywatchers documents nutrient-related water quality and the effects of nitrogen pollution. The large majority of stations are located in sub-estuaries of the main Bay, although stations in central Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound were added beginning in 2007. Measurements include temperature, salinity, Secchi depth and concentrations of dissolved oxygen, ammonium, nitrate + nitrite, total dissolved nitrogen, particulate organic nitrogen, particulate organic carbon, ortho-phosphate, chlorophyll a, pheophytin a, and in lower salinity waters, total phosphorus and dissolved organic carbon. The Baywatchers dataset provides a long-term record of the water quality of Buzzards Bay and its sub-estuaries. The data have been used to identify impaired waters, evaluate discharge permits, support the development of nitrogen total maximum daily loads, develop strategies for reducing nitrogen inputs, and increase public awareness and generate support for management actions to control nutrient pollution and improve water quality.

Description: We thank the more than 1,500 volunteer Baywatchers citizen monitors who helped collect this information over 27 years. Since its inception, funding for this program has been provided through grants from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Buzzards Bay municipalities, private foundations, and members of the Buzzards Bay Coalition. Thank you to Paul Lefebvre for producing the station map. Amy Costa of the Center for Coastal Studies kindly provided data for comparison. Brian Howes of the School for Marine Science and Technology, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth kindly provided the data for West Falmouth Harbor collected through the Falmouth Pond Watchers program. We thank the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woodwell Climate Research Center for support to C. Neill, R. McHorney and L. Scott.