Carbon in the Southern Ocean Region - the CARINA project: Results and Data, Version 1.1.

CARINA Data Synthesis Project By The CARINA Group The CARINA (CARbon dioxide IN the Atlantic Ocean) data synthesis project is an international collaborative effort of the EU IP CARBOOCEAN, and US partners. It has produced a merged internally consistent data set of open ocean subsurface measurements for biogeochemical investigations, in particular, studies involving the carbon system. The original focus area was the North Atlantic Ocean, but over time the geographic extent expanded and CARINA now includes data from the entire Atlantic, the Arctic Ocean, and the Southern Ocean. Carbon data from the Pacific Ocean are being synthesized in the PICES effort. The CARINA database includes data from 188 cruises. The salinity, oxygen, nutrient, inorganic carbon system and CFC data have been subjected to extensive quality control and adjustments have been made when necessary. The internally consistent data are available as three data products, one each for the Arctic Mediterranean Seas, the Atlantic and the Southern Oceans (CARINA Data Products). In addition, all of the individual cruise data files have been made available in WOCE exchange format in a single location (Cruise Summary Table) along with metadata and references. We strongly recommend users to employ the data products instead of the individual cruise files as the data in the latter have not been corrected for biases identified during the secondary QC. The CARINA effort is further described in the following as well as in the CARINA special issue of Earth System Science Data (ESSD) Journal. History of the CARINA project The CARINA project began as an informal collaboration with limited funding. The project was started by D. Wallace and L. Mintrop, and had an organizational meeting at Delmenhorst, Germany in 1999. Mintrop acted as data collector. Participation was voluntary and composed mainly of European scientists. Participating scientists were required to submit their historical data sets that included either subsurface carbon system measurements or underway surface pCO2 data. The last meeting of this group was held in 2002. By that time the group had accumulated subsurface data from approximately 30 cruises (excluding those cruises that were in GLODAP) and twice that number of underway data sets. The funding ended in 2003 and, unfortunately, the support level was insufficient to do much more than amass and catalog the submitted data (Original CARINA website). In 2004 the original CARINA data collection was transferred to Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) and a copy of the CARINA bottle data was transferred to Princeton for data assessment and quality control. In January 2005 the E.U. funded CARBOOCEAN program began. This consortium includes most of the original CARINA scientists. CARBOOCEAN is an integrated program with the aim of making an accurate assessment of oceanic sources and sinks of carbon over space and time. It has focus on the Atlantic and Southern Ocean and a time interval of -200 to +200 years from the present. All funded CARBOOCEAN partners are required to make public all historical data and new data after a two year proprietary period. In June, 2006 the CARBOOCEAN/CARINA scientists met in Laugarvatn, Iceland to discuss methods and responsibilities for the CARINA data synthesis. By that time, the CARINA collection had grown to approximately 80 cruises. During this meeting the group decided to extend the original scope of CARINA to include the entire Atlantic, the Arctic and the Southern Ocean. Various team and project leader assignments were: Data collection, 1st QC and production of final data products: R. Key and X. Lin Atlantic Ocean: T. Tanhua Arctic Ocean: S. Jutterstr�m Nordic Seas: A. Olsen Southern Ocean: M. Hoppema 2nd QC code development: S. van Heuven Web site development and maintenance: C. Schirnick Carbon calculation software: A. Velo CDIAC data archive: A. Kozyr Southern Ocean Carbon Synthesis Compared to other regions within the CARINA data set, the Southern Ocean database consists of relatively few data - 37 cruises. Five cruises in the northern part of the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean are in common with the CARINA-ATL, thus additionally warranting high internal data quality. The northern boundary of the CARINA Southern Ocean region is roughly at 30�S latitude. Considering all stations in the Southern Ocean CARINA dataset there is a bias towards the north, indicating that data close to the Antarctic continent is still sparse. Besides the new CARINA cruises, 46 cruises from the GLODAP database were incorporated in the analysis as reference cruises. Nutrient and oxygen data have a clearly higher incidence than TCO2 and total alkalinity data. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are also included in the Southern Ocean dataset, but they have not been quality controlled. Not surprisingly, most of the CARINA Southern Ocean data originate from the post-GLODAP era, i.e., from 2000 or later. Region specific quality control is described in three papers, for the Pacific sector by Sabine et al. (2009), the Indian sector by Lo Monaco et al. (2009) and the Atlantic sector by Hoppema et al. (2009). An expanded version of the information contained here is available in the CARINA Numeric Data Package (NDP-091).