Seawater dissolved inorganic carbon and total alkalinity for UK Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry collected by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science.

This dataset contains 371 measurements of seawater dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (TA) from the northwest European continental shelf sea (49-61 deg N, 9 deg W-7 deg E). The samples were collected from January 2014 to November 2015 by various Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) cruises on R/V Cefas Endeavour, as part of the UK Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry research programme (UK-SSB). The purpose was to constrain the surface layer DIC and TA concentrations, primarily in order to calculate air-sea CO₂ fluxes. Measurements were carried out from October 2014 to January 2016 using Apollo SciTech (DIC Analyzer AS-C3 and TA Titrator AS-ALK2) and VINDTA 3C (#024 and #038, Marianda, Germany) instruments at the University of Southampton (UK). Bad results resulting from technical issues during analysis have been removed from these results, so there are no recognised issues. The data were collected as part of the SSB research programme in the CaNDyFloSS: Carbon and Nutrient Dynamics and Fluxes over Shelf Systems (NE/K00185X/1) research programme component. SSB was co-funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The programme took a holistic approach to the cycling of nutrients and carbon and the controls on primary and secondary production in UK and European shelf seas, to increase understanding of these processes and their role in wider biogeochemical cycles. The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) created the metadata entry and is responsible for holding master copies of the data.