Last week, scientists with AOML’s Ocean Carbon Cycle team led a workshop under the international Surface Ocean CO2 Reference Observing Network (SOCONET) on best practices for maintaining an underway pCO2 system and quality-controlling data to standardize crucial measurements of the surface ocean’s uptake of carbon.
The global ocean takes up carbon from the atmosphere on the scale of billions of metric tons every year, influencing natural carbon cycling and exacerbating environmental stressors like ocean acidification. However, this accumulation varies across time and region, making it necessary to monitor these changes with continuous, sustained measurements of carbon cycling across the ocean’s surface. SOCONET, an international collaboration, acts as the backbone in monitoring these fluctuations on a global scale with the goal of assessing and predicting its importance in the Earth’ global carbon budget and possibly inform ocean acidification mitigation strategies.
Supported by NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing program (GOMO), Denis Pierrot, Ph.D., a chemical oceanographer at AOML, led the workshop with a day spent teaching partners and collaborators from national institutions how best to maintain the underway pCO2 system and two days spent on managing data relayed from ships.
Denis Pierrot, Ph.D gives an explanation of the Underway pCO2 sensor during the technical workshop
A series of cruise ships, research vessels, and cargo have been equipped with these systems to measure changes in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) while in transit as part of the international Ships of Opportunity Program (SOOP). Scientists at AOML play a leading role in installing and maintaining these systems onboard ships as well as quality-controlling the data being transmitted in near-real time — that ultimately feeds into global monitoring efforts under SOCONET.
Learn more about SOCONET here.
Explore existing SOOP-CO2 data.
A map of data collected by Ships of Opportunity.