Publication Date:
2022-05-25
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.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
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