Carbon in the Arctic Mediterranean Seas Region - the CARINA project: Results and Data, Version 1.0.

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 The Arctic Mediterranean Seas subset of CARINA (CARINA-AMS) includes data from 62 cruises/campaigns in the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas. One of these is a time series and one is a collection of data from multiple cruises to the same area conducted within a year. Five of the CARINA-AMS entries are in common with the CARINA-ATL subset ensuring consistency with the other CARINA subsets and thus GLODAP. While data coverage was quite dense in the Nordic Seas, it was sparse in the Arctic Ocean. This motivated the use of different methods for quality control in these two areas. The Arctic Ocean was defined as the region north of the Fram and Bering Straits, the Arctic Ocean shelf seas, and the Canadian Archipelago. The Nordic Seas was defined as the region enclosed by the Fram Strait to the North, Greenland to the west, the Greenland-Scotland Ridge to the South, and Norway, the Barents Sea Opening, and Spitsbergen to the east. The analyses of the Arctic Ocean data involved extended use of linear and multiple linear regressions and is described by Jutterstr�m et al. (2009), while the analyses of the Nordic Seas data was mostly carried out using the crossover and inversion approach and is described per parameter in Falck and Olsen (2009), Olafsson and Olsen (2009), Olsen (2009), Olsen (2009) and Olsen et al.(2009). The analyses of the AMS CFC data are described by Jeansson et al. (2009). An expanded version of the information contained here is available in the CARINA Numeric Data Package (NDP-091).