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Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (OCADS)

The Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (OCADS) is a data management system specializing in the management of ocean carbon and ocean acidification (OA) data within NCEI. See the OCADS Paper in Nature for more information.

Scope, Mission, and Services

OCADS manages a wide range of ocean carbon and acidification data, including chemical, physical, and biological observations collected from research vessels, ships of opportunity, and uncrewed platforms, as well as laboratory experiment results, and model outputs. Additionally, OCADS serves as a repository for Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) biogeochemistry Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) that are closely related to ocean carbon and acidification research, e.g., oxygen, nutrients, transient tracers, and stable isotopes. As a new development, OCADS accepts submissions of data generated from marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) and Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) related research.

The mission of OCADS is to work closely with our data partners to provide data management services that facilitate and support research on ocean carbon cycling and ocean acidification. This is accomplished through: 

  • Safeguarding data in a well-supported federal archive to ensure long-term accessibility (>75 years)
  • Serving as one of the world's leading providers of ocean carbon and acidification data, information, and products
  • Providing data management support for quality control, synthesis, and data product development activities

Contact

Contact us at noaa.ocads@noaa.gov for help with Ocean Acidification data access and submission methods, or other questions about the project.

Address

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
1315 East-West Hwy
4th floor, SSMC-3
Silver Spring, MD 20910
USA

OCADS prioritizes a customer-centric approach, and is committed to gathering knowledge and expertise from the research community to improve its data management practices. One of our goals is to make ocean carbon and acidification data available through one portal. We welcome data submissions from researchers and organizations around the world.

Acknowledgements

The OCADS project is funded by the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (OAP),  the Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (GOMO), and NCEI.

OAP Logo
GOMO Logo
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Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data Portal

Search for individual collection-level ocean carbon and acidification datasets based on:

  • Variables/parameters
  • Observation category
  • Additional terms
  • Observation dates
  • Spatial coverage

For more information, watch our video tutorial.

Launch OCADS Portal

NCEI Argo Data Collection Page

Every month, a version of the Argo data is published at NCEI. To access the latest version of the Argo data, click the “Lineage” tab, and scroll down to the bottom of the “Output Datasets” row.

Global Argo Data Repository

FTP Access

Argo data are also available from US-Godae and Coriolis GDAC FTP site:

Argo Data Selection Tools

Additional Links

Overview

Please use the Scientific Data Information System (SDIS) to submit all OA data except for surface CO2 data collected from underway, mooring, Saildrone, etc. Please review the “Resources” tab for more information before you attempt to make any submissions.

Submission Methods

Discrete Bottle, Biological, and Other Data

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Scientific Data Information System (SDIS)

Use SDIS to submit ocean carbon and ocean acidification data. Contact Linus Kamb (linus.kamb@noaa.gov) for help creating an SDIS account or other technical questions. Direct other data submission questions  to noaa.ocads@noaa.gov, or watch our video tutorial

Launch SDIS

Data Standards

Surface Underway and Autonomous Sensor CO2

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Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) Dashboard

Use the SOCAT dashboard to submit surface CO2 data collected from underway, mooring, Saildrone, etc.

Launch SOCAT

Data Standards

Underway Data
Autonomous Sensor Data

Excel Submission Form (Not Recommended)

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The Excel based submission approach is presented here to support the transition to SDIS. It is no longer the recommended way of submitting data to OCADS.

Excel Submission Instructions

For in situ observational water chemistry data, please follow the below data templates as closely as possible. If there is no data in one column, please remove the column entirely, feel free to add additional columns as well.

Best practices for assessing trends of ocean acidification time series

Profile Data

CTD, discrete bottle water samples, etc.

Autonomous Sensor Data

Mooring, Saildrone, Argo, glider, etc.

Physiological Response Data

Laboratory experiment, Mesocosm, Field experiment, Natural analogue, etc.

 

 

Expedition codes (EXPOCODEs) uniquely identify specific voyages. These codes are composed of the four-character ship code assigned by  of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and the date of departure from port (Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC) using ISO-8601 format (YYYYMMDD). For example, a research expedition onboard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ship Ronald H. Brown (ICES code: 33RO) leaving the port on August 27, 2015 (Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC) would have an EXPOCODE of 33RO20150827. It is critical for all laboratories participating in the same oceanographic expedition to share the same EXPOCODEso. That way, all data from the cruise can be retrieved based on a single EXPOCODE.

Research Vessel Codes

Information on batches of seawater Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) can be accessed through Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). This page is managed by Dr. Andrew Dickson's group. For questions about the CRMs, please reach out to [co2crms (at) ucsd.edu]

GSW_Sys

This Excel program (GSW_Sys_v1.0.xlsm) uses the latest International Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater – 2010 (TEOS-10) equations to calculate depth (unit: meter) [or pressure (unit: dbar), depending on the input], Absolute Salinity (SA, unit: g/kg), Conservative Temperature (Θ, unit: degree Celsius), potential temperature (θ, unit: degree Celsius), and potential density anomaly (σθ, unit: kg m–3) from input of location (latitude and longitude), depth or pressure, practical salinity, and temperature. This tool can also be used to calculate apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) and percent oxygen from dissolved oxygen.

Download GSW_Sys

fCO2_Calc

A newly developed fCO2_Calc program is also presented to standardize the calculation of partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and fugacity of carbon dioxide (fCO2) from molecular ratio (mole fraction) of carbon dioxide in dry air (xCO2) measurements.

Download fCO2_Calc

CO2SYS Tools

Oceanographers often use two of the traditionally measured seawater carbon dioxide (CO2) system parameters [namely, total dissolved inorganic carbon content (DIC), total alkalinity content (TA), pH, and carbon dioxide partial pressure (pCO2) or fugacity (fCO2)] to compute the complete carbonate system using a program such as CO2SYS

CO2SYS Tools
Platform Program Version Link  Reference
Microsoft Excel CO2SYS_v3.0_Err.xlsm 3.0 https://github.com/dpierrot/co2sys_xl Pierrot, 2021
MATLAB/GNU Octave CO2SYS.m, errors.m 3.1.1 http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3950562 Sharp et al., 2020
Python PyCO2SYS 1.6.0 https://PyCO2SYS.readthedocs.io Humphreys et al., 2020
R seacarb 3.2.13 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=seacarb Gattuso et al., 2021
Windows, Mac OS X, and iOS CO2calc   https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1280/ Robbins et al. (2010)

Recommended dissociation constants for carbonic acid, bisulfate (HSO4–), and hydrofluoric acid (HF), as well as the equations to calculate total borate are presented in Section “Recommended Dissociation Constants and Other Values for Carbon System Calculations” of the Supplementary Material of Jiang et al., 2022.

  • A broad recommendation can be made to use the dissociation constants from Lueker et al. (2000) for carbonic acid at salinities for open ocean situations [SP: 19-43, and temperature (T): 2-35°C] and the dissociation constants from Waters et al. (2014) [refitted based on data compiled by Millero (2010)] for brackish-water situations [the range of validity of these constants was stated as SP: 1-50, T: 0-50°C].
  • The boron-salinity (B/SP) ratio of Lee et al. (2010) is recommended over that of Uppström (1974), as it is based on more data and used an improved method of determination.
  • For the dissociation constants of bisulfate (HSO4–), Dickson (1990) is recommended over Khoo et al. (1977). For the dissociation constants of hydrofluoric acid (HF), Perez and Fraga (1987) is recommended over Dickson and Riley (1979). However, the choices of HSO4– and HF parameterizations should have little effect on any calculated results unless one of the input or output parameters is pH on “free” scale.

The following tools were developed by Travis Courtney, Andreas Andersson, Stephen Chan, and David Kriegmanat the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to estimate (a) coral reef carbonate production rates from classification of coral reef substrates, and (b) calcification dissolution potential from salinity-normalized total alkalinity anomalies. For more information, please check out this paper.

CoralNet

A free, online resource for analyzing benthic imagery that now includes calcification rates to estimate carbonate production rates from benthic imagery data to better estimate coral reef calcification capacity:

Calcification Dissolution Potential Tool

This Excel based tool calculates coral reef seawater total alkalinity anomalies for unknown or known user-specified freshwater total alkalinity endmembers to determine whether a coral reef is likely net calcifying, at a potential tipping point between calcification and dissolution, or net dissolving:

  • Primary-level QC tool for discrete bottle based measurements (AtlantOS)
  • Primary-level QC tool for autonomous Oxygen, Nitrate, and pH measurements from biogeochemical profiling floats:
  • Second-level QC tool for discrete bottle based ocean chemistry and hydrographic data by Siv K. Lauvset (NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research)

The three sets of WOCE primary level quality control (QC) flags for Niskin bottles, discrete sampling, and sensor based measurements, respectively, are consolidated here into a single flagging scheme to avoid confusion (Jiang et al., 2022). This consolidated flagging scheme is recommended for all types of OA data that will be submitted to OCADS.

QC Flags
FlagMeaning
2Acceptable
3Questionable
4Known bad
6Median of replicates
9Missing value

  • Empirical Seawater Property Estimation Routines (ESPERs): https://github.com/BRCScienceProducts/ESPER.
    Citation: Carter, B. R., Bittig, H. C., Fassbender, A. J., Sharp, J. D., Takeshita, Y., Xu, Y. Y., Álvarez, M., Wanninkhof, R., Feely, R. A., & Barbero, L. (2021). New and updated global empirical seawater property estimation routines. Limnology and Oceanography: Methods, 19(12), 785–809. https://doi.org/10.1002/lom3.10461.
  • CArbonate system and Nutrients concentration from hYdrological properties and Oxygen using a Neural-network (Canyon-B): https://github.com/HCBScienceProducts/CANYON-B. Citation: Bittig et al. (2018). An alternative to static climatologies: Robust estimation of open ocean CO2 variables and nutrient concentrations from T, S and O2 data using Bayesian neural networks. Front. Mar. Sci. 5:328. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2018.00328.

These documents are only applicable to NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) investigators.

References

  • Gattuso, J.-P., Epitalon, J.-M., Lavigne, H., and Orr, J. (2021). seacarb: Seawater Carbonate Chemistry. R package version 3.2.16. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=seacarb.
  • Humphreys, M. P., Gregor, L., Pierrot, D., van Heuven, S. M. A. C., Lewis, E., and Wallace, D.W.R. (2020). PyCO2SYS: marine carbonate system calculations in Python. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.3744275.
  • Jiang, L.-Q., D. Pierrot, R. Wanninkhof, R. A. Feely, B. Tilbrook, S. Alin, L. Barbero, R. H. Byrne, B. R. Carter, A. G. Dickson, J.-P. Gattuso, D. Greeley, M. Hoppema, M. P. Humphreys, J. Karstensen, N. Lange, S. K. Lauvset, E. R. Lewis, A. Olsen, F. F. Perez, C. Sabine, J. D. Sharp, T. Tanhua, T. W. Trull, A. Velo, A. J. Allegra, P. Barker, E. Burger, W.-J. Cai, C.-T. A. Chen, J. Cross, H. Garcia, J. M. Hernandez-Ayon, X. Hu, A. Kozyr, C. Langdon, K. Lee, J. Salisbury, Z. A. Wang, and L. Xue (2022), Best Practice Data Standards for Discrete Chemical Oceanographic Observations. Frontiers in Marine Science. 8:705638, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.705638.
  • Pierrot, D., Epitalon, J.-M., Orr, J.C., Lewis, E., and Wallace, D. W. R., MS Excel program developed for CO2 system calculations – version 3.0, (2021). https://github.com/dpierrot/co2sys_xl.
  • Robbins, L. L., Hansen, M. E., Kleypas, J. A., and Meylan, S. C. (2010). CO2calc: A User-Friendly Seawater Carbon Calculator for Windows, Mac OS X, and iOS (iPhone). doi:10.3133/ofr20101280.
  • Sharp, J. D., Pierrot, D., Humphreys, M. P., Epitalon, J.-M., Orr, J. C., Lewis, E. R., Wallace, D. W. R. (2020). CO2SYSv3 for MATLAB. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3950562.
  • Woosley, R. J., & Moon, J.-Y. (2023). Re-evaluation of carbonic acid dissociation constants across conditions and the implications for ocean acidification. Marine Chemistry, 104247. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marchem.2023.104247.

November 2023

OCADS scientist, Dr. Li-Qing Jiang, led a chapter of the “Guide to Best Practices in Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Research”, a comprehensive document prepared by 51 international researchers that explore the emerging research area of ocean alkalinity enhance (OAE), one of the principal methods in marine Carbon Dioxide Removal. The Chapter Dr. Jiang led, “Data reporting and sharing for ocean alkalinity enhancement research”, focuses on establishing data management guidelines for OAE. For further information, refer to the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation press release for more details.  

  • Jiang, L.-Q., Subhas, A. V., Basso, D., Fennel, K., and Gattuso, J.-P.: Data reporting and sharing for ocean alkalinity enhancement research, in: Guide to Best Practices in Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Research, edited by: Oschlies, A., Stevenson, A., Bach, L. T., Fennel, K., Rickaby, R. E. M., Satterfield, T., Webb, R., and Gattuso, J.-P., Copernicus Publications, State Planet, 2-oae2023, 13, https://doi.org/10.5194/sp-2-oae2023-13-2023, 2023. June 21, 2023

October 31, 2023

OCADS Scientist, Dr. Li-Qing Jiang, is a co-author on a new paper that reports the rapid changes in ocean chemistry from global ocean observations over recent decades, highlighting the impacts of anthropogenic carbon dioxide absorption. The study, titled “Acidification of the Global Surface Ocean: What We Have Learned from Observations,” provides a high-resolution, region­ally varying view of global surface ocean carbon dioxide fugacity, carbonate ion content, total hydro­gen ion content, pH on total scale, and aragonite and calcite saturation states on selected time intervals from 1961 to 2020. 

  • Feely, R. A., Jiang, L.-Q., Wanninkhof, R., Carter, B. R., Alin, S. R., Bednaršek, N., and Cosca, C. E. (2023). Acidification of the global surface ocean: What we have learned from observations. Oceanography, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2023.222. 

October 20, 2023

Global Ocean Data Analysis Project version 2.2023 (GLODAPv2.2023) is now published. GLODAPv2.2023 data product composed of data from 1108 scientific cruises covering the global ocean between 1972 and 2021. It includes full depth discrete bottle measurements of salinity, oxygen, nitrate, silicate, phosphate, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), total alkalinity (TA), CO2 fugacity (fCO2), pH, chlorofluorocarbons (CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113, and CCl4), SF6, and various isotopes and organic compounds. 

June 2023

The new version of SOCATv2023 is now available from OCADS/NCEI. The data files are available here. SOCAT version 2023 has delivered 35.6 million quality-controlled in situ surface ocean fCO2 (fugacity of CO2) measurements on ships, moorings, autonomous and drifting surface platforms for the global oceans and coastal seas from 1957 to 2022. The main synthesis and gridded products contain fCO2 values with an estimated accuracy of better than 5 μatm. Sensor fCO2 data with an estimated accuracy of 5 to 10 μatm are separately available. During quality control, marine scientists assign a flag to each data set, as well as WOCE flags of 2 (good), 3 (questionable) or 4 (bad) to individual fCO2 values. Data sets are assigned flags of A and B for an estimated accuracy of better than 2 μatm, flags of C and D for an accuracy of better than 5 μatm and a flag of E for an accuracy of better than 10 μatm.

The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas Version 2023 (SOCATv2023) database is now available at NCEI. See socat.info for more information. 

Citation: Bakker, Dorothee C. E.; Alin, Simone R.; Bates, Nicholas; Becker, Meike; Feely, Richard A.; Gkritzalis, Thanos; Jones, Steve D.; Kozyr, Alex; Lauvset, Siv K.; Metzl, Nicolas; Munro, David R.; Nakaoka, Shin-ichiro; Nojiri, Yukihiro; O'Brien, Kevin M.; Olsen, Are; Pierrot, Denis; Rehder, Gregor; Steinhoff, Tobias; Sutton, Adrienne J.; Sweeney, Colm; Tilbrook, Bronte; Wada, Chisato; Wanninkhof, Rik; Akl, John; Barbero, Leticia; Beatty, Cory M.; Berghoff, Carla F.; Bittig, Henry C.; Bott, Randy; Burger, Eugene F.; Cai, Wei-Jun; Castaño-Primo, Rocío; Corredor, Jorge E.; Cronin, Margot; De Carlo, Eric H.; DeGrandpre, Michael D.; Dietrich, Colin; Drennan, William M.; Emerson, Steven R.; Enochs, Ian C.; Enyo, Kazutaka; Epherra, Lucía; Evans, Wiley; Fiedler, Björn; Fontela, Marcos; Frangoulis, Constantin; Gehrung, Martina; Giannoudi, Louisa; Glockzin, Michael; Hales, Burke; Howden, Stephan D.; Ibánhez, J. Severino P.; Kamb, Linus; Körtzinger, Arne; Lefèvre, Nathalie; Lo Monaco, Claire; Lutz, Vivian A.; Macovei, Vlad A.; Maenner Jones, Stacy; Manalang, Dana; Manzello, Derek P.; Metzl, Nicolas; Mickett, John; Millero, Frank J.; Monacci, Natalie M.; Morell, Julio M.; Musielewicz, Sylvia; Neill, Craig; Newberger, Tim; Newton, Jan; Noakes, Scott; Ólafsdóttir, Sólveig Rósa; Ono, Tsuneo; Osborne, John; Padín, Xose A.; Paulsen, Melf; Perivoliotis, Leonidas; Petersen, Wilhelm; Petihakis, George; Plueddemann, Albert J.; Rodriguez, Carmen; Rutgersson, Anna; Sabine, Christopher L.; Salisbury, Joseph E.; Schlitzer, Reiner; Skjelvan, Ingunn; Stamataki, Natalia; Sullivan, Kevin F.; Sutherland, Stewart C.; T'Jampens, Michiel; Tadokoro, Kazuaki; Tanhua, Toste; Telszewski, Maciej; Theetaert, Hannelore; Tomlinson, Michael; Vandemark, Douglas; Velo, Antón; Voynova, Yoana G.; Weller, Robert A.; Whitehead, Chris; Wimart-Rousseau, Cathy (2023). Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas Database Version 2023 (SOCATv2023) (NCEI Accession 0278913). [indicate subset used]. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.25921/r7xa-bt92. Accessed [date].

 

March 23, 2023

A new model-data fusion product presents the evolution of 10 ocean acidification (OA) indicators in the global surface ocean from 1750 to 2100. It offers a state-of-the-art research and management tool for the 21st century under the combined stressors of global climate change and ocean acidification.

  • Paper: doi: 10.1029/2022MS003563 
  • Gridded data product 
  • Pre-plotted maps
  • Citation: Jiang, L.-Q., Dunne, J., Carter, B. R., Tjiputra, J. F., Terhaar, J., Sharp, J. D., Olsen, A., Alin, S., Bakker, D. C. E., Feely, R. A., Gattuso, J.-P., Hogan, P., Ilyina, T., Lange, N., Lauvset, S. K., Lewis, E. R., Lovato, T., Palmieri, J., Santana-Falcón, Y., Schwinger, J., Séférian, R., Strand, G., Swart, N., Tanhua, T., Tsujino, H., Wanninkhof, R., Watanabe, M., Yamamoto, A., and Ziehn, T. (2023). Global surface ocean acidification indicators from 1750 to 2100. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 15 (3), e2022MS003563. doi: 10.1029/2022MS003563.

March 15, 2023 

A new paper describing the Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (OCADS) has been published at Nature - Scientific Data.

  • Citation: Jiang, L.-Q., Kozyr, A., Relph, J., Ronje, E., Kamb, L., Burger, E., Myer, J., Nguyen, L., Arzayus, K. M., Boyer, T., Cross, S., Garcia, H., Hogan, P., Larsen, K., and Parsons, A. R. (2023). The ocean carbon and acidification data system. Nature-Scientific Data, 10, 136. doi: 10.1038/s41597-023-02042-0.

January, 2023

A new NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) research project tracking system linking research projects to their respective published datasets at NCEI's archive is now available.

August, 2022

The Global Ocean Data Analysis Project version 2.2022 (GLODAPv2.2022) database is now available via NCEI. See glodap.info for more information. 

Citation: Lauvset, Siv K.; Lange, Nico; Tanhua, Toste; Bittig, Henry C.; Olsen, Are; Kozyr, Alex; Alin, Simone R.; Álvarez, Marta; Azetsu-Scott, Kumiko; Barbero, Leticia; Becker, Susan; Brown, Peter J.; Carter, Brendan R.; Cotrim da Cunha, Leticia; Feely, Richard A.; Hoppema, Mario; Humphreys, Matthew P.; Ishii, Masao; Jeansson, Emil; Jiang, Li-Qing; Jones, Steve D.; Lo Monaco, Claire; Murata, Akihiko; Müller, Jens Daniel; Pérez, Fiz F.; Pfeil, Benjamin; Schirnick, Carsten; Steinfeldt, Reiner; Suzuki, Toru; Tilbrook, Bronte; Ulfsbo, Adam; Velo, Antón; Woosley, Ryan J.; Key, Robert M. (2022). Global Ocean Data Analysis Project version 2.2022 (GLODAPv2.2022) (NCEI Accession 0257247). NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.25921/1f4w-0t92.

About GLODAPv2.2022

The GLODAPv2.2022 data product is composed of data from 1085 scientific cruises covering the global ocean between 1972 and 2021. It includes full depth discrete bottle measurements of salinity, oxygen, nitrate, silicate, phosphate, dissolved inorganic carbon (TCO2), total alkalinity (TAlk), CO2 fugacity (fCO2), pH, chlorofluorocarbons (CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113, and CCl4), SF6, and various isotopes and organic compounds. It was created by appending data from 96 cruises to GLODAPv2.2021 (Lauvset et al., 2021, NCEI Accession 0237935). The data for salinity, oxygen, nitrate, silicate, phosphate, TCO2, TAlk, pH, CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113, CCl4, and SF6 were subjected to primary and secondary quality control. Severe biases in these data have been corrected for, and outliers removed. 

The GLODAP group is putting the finishing touches on the manuscript and it will be submitted to EESD in the coming days.

June, 2022

The SOCATv2022 database is now available via NCEI. The ocean absorbs a quarter of the global CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions from human activity. The community-led Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas(SOCAT) is a key tool for quantifying ocean CO2 uptake and its variation. SOCAT version 2022 has quality-controlled in situ surface ocean fCO2 (fugacity of CO2) measurements made on ships, moorings, autonomous and drifting surface platforms for the global ocean and coastal seas from 1957 to 2021. 

The main SOCAT synthesis and gridded products contain 33.7 million fCO2 values with an estimated accuracy of < 5 μatm. An additional 6.4 million fCO2 sensor data with an accuracy of 5–10 μatm are separately available. SOCAT is used to quantify ocean CO2 uptake and ocean

April, 2022

A new data management project called Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (OCADS) was established at NCEI, after merging the former Ocean Acidification Data Stewardship (OADS, founded in 2012) and Ocean Carbon Data System (OCADS, founded in 2017) projects. The merger was driven by feedback from the OA research community, citing difficulties of discerning the differences of the former OADS and OCADS projects, when it comes to data submission and data access purposes. None of the previously published data sets will be affected by this merger. The new OCADS project manages all major types of OA data and welcomes data submissions from around the world. If you have any comments on the new OCADS website, would you please follow this link to share them with us? Many thanks!

March, 2022

OCADS team member Li-Qing Jiang was awarded a new proposal titled Temporal changes of ocean acidification indicators in the U.S. Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) - an operational data product at NOAA/NCEI in support of NOAA’s National Marine Ecosystem Status effort by NOAA's Ocean Acidification Program (OAP). His co-investigators include: Tim Boyer (NCEI, Federal lead), Dr. Brendan Carter (University of Washington), Dr. Jonathan Sharp (University of Washington), and Dr. Paige Lavin (University of Maryland). The goal of this proposal is to develop an operational OA data product to show the temporal changes of OA indicators in the U.S. Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs).

February, 2022

Congratulations to OCADS team member Alex Kozyr for winning the 2021 NOAA OAR Outstanding Papers Award as a co-author of the recent Science paper on the oceanic sink of anthropogenic CO2.

Citation: Gruber, N., D. Clement, B. R. Carter, R. A. Feely, S. Van Heuven, M. Hoppema, M. Ishii, R. M Key, A. Kozyr, S. K. Lauvset, C. L. Monaco, Mathis, J. T., A. Murata, A. Olsen, F. F. Perez, C. L. Sabine, T. Tanhua, and R. Wanninkhof (2019), The oceanic sink for anthropogenic CO2 from 1994 to 2007. Science 363: 1193-1199, doi: 10.1126/science.aau5153.

January, 2022

A best practice data standard for discrete chemical oceanographic observations was developed by an international effort led by OCADS team member Li-Qing Jiang. The produced data standard was published in Frontiers in Marine Science (Press releases: NCEI, UMD).

  • The new standard covers Column header abbreviations, consolidated quality control (QC) flags, and missing value indicators (i.e., -999 or NaN). The column header abbreviation standards presented here are an update and refinement of the Exchange format of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) Hydrographic Program (Joyce and Corry, 1994; Swift and Diggs, 2008).
  • A newly developed Excel program (GSW_Sys_v1.0.xlsm) using the latest International Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater – 2010 (TEOS-10) equations to calculate depth (unit: meter) [or pressure (unit: dbar), depending on the input], Absolute Salinity (SA, unit: g/kg), Conservative Temperature (Θ, unit: degree Celsius), potential temperature (θ, unit: degree Celsius), and potential density anomaly (σθ, unit: kg m–3) from input of location (latitude and longitude), depth or pressure, practical salinity, and temperature is presented in this paper. This tool can also be used to calculate apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) and percent oxygen from dissolved oxygen.
  • A newly developed fCO2_Calc program is also presented to standardize the calculation of partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and fugacity of carbon dioxide (fCO2) from molecular ratio (mole fraction) of carbon dioxide in dry air (xCO2) measurements.
  • Upgraded CO2SYS programs (available in Excel, MATLAB/GNU Octave, and Python) and the R package seacarb that accept [CO32–], as well as [HCO3–] (bicarbonate ion content), and [CO2*] (the sum of dissolved carbon dioxide [CO2(aq)] and carbonic acid content [H2CO3]) as input variables is also presented in this paper.
  • Recommended dissociation constants for carbonic acid, bisulfate (HSO4–), and hydrofluoric acid (HF), as well as the equations to calculate total borate are presented in section “Recommended Dissociation Constants and Other Values for Carbon System Calculations” of the Supplementary Material of Jiang et al., 2022.

Citation: Jiang, L.-Q., D. Pierrot, R. Wanninkhof, R. A. Feely, B. Tilbrook, S. Alin, L. Barbero, R. H. Byrne, B. R. Carter, A. G. Dickson, J.-P. Gattuso, D. Greeley, M. Hoppema, M. P. Humphreys, J. Karstensen, N. Lange, S. K. Lauvset, E. R. Lewis, A. Olsen, F. F. Perez, C. Sabine, J. D. Sharp, T. Tanhua, T. W. Trull, A. Velo, A. J. Allegra, P. Barker, E. Burger, W.-J. Cai, C.-T. A. Chen, J. Cross, H. Garcia, J. M. Hernandez-Ayon, X. Hu, A. Kozyr, C. Langdon, K. Lee, J. Salisbury, Z. A. Wang, and L. Xue (2022), Best Practice Data Standards for Discrete Chemical Oceanographic Observations. Frontiers in Marine Science 8: 705638, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.705638.

June, 2021

A new coastal OA data product called Coastal Ocean Data Analysis Product in North America (CODAP-NA) was published in the journal of Earth System Science Data (press release). CODAP-NA is similar to GLODAPv2 but for the coastal ocean. In this collaborative effort, OCADS team member Li-Qing Jiang coordinated with investigators from NOAA laboratories, including PMEL, AOML, and NEFSC, as well as 10 academic institutions to compile, quality-controlled, and synthesized 2 decades (2003-2018) of discrete measurements of inorganic carbon system parameters, oxygen, and nutrient chemistry data from the North American ocean margins. This version (v2021) of the CODAP-NA comprises 3391 oceanographic profiles from 61 research cruises.

Citation: Jiang, L.-Q., R. A. Feely, R. Wanninkhof, D. Greeley, L. Barbero, S. Alin, B. R. Carter, D. Pierrot, C. Featherstone, J. Hooper, C. Melrose, N. Monacci, J. Sharp, S. Shellito, Y.-Y. Xu, A. Kozyr, R. H. Byrne, W.-J., Cai, J. Cross, G. C. Johnson, B. Hales, C. Langdon, J. Mathis, J. Salisbury, and D. Townsend (2021), Coastal Ocean Data Analysis Product in North America (CODAP-NA) – An internally consistent data product for discrete inorganic carbon, oxygen, and nutrients on the U.S. North American ocean margins. Earth System Science Data, 13, 2777–2799, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-2777-2021.

July, 2021

A compiled data product of discrete biogeochemical measurements from 35 individual cruise data sets in the southern Salish Sea and northern California Current System was published at NCEI (product, data).

[Jun. 2021]: Version 2021 of the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT.v2021) data product was published at NCEI. The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis activity for quality-controlled, surface ocean fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) observations by the international marine carbon research community.

Citation: Bakker, D. C. E., Pfeil, B., Landa, C. S., Metzl, N., O'Brien, K. M., Olsen, A., Smith, K., Cosca, C., Harasawa, S., Jones, S. D., Nakaoka, S., Nojiri, Y., Schuster, U., Steinhoff, T., Sweeney, C., Takahashi, T., Tilbrook, B., Wada, C., Wanninkhof, R., Alin, S. R., Balestrini, C. F., Barbero, L., Bates, N. R., Bianchi, A. A., Bonou, F., Boutin, J., Bozec, Y., Burger, E. F., Cai, W.-J., Castle, R. D., Chen, L., Chierici, M., Currie, K., Evans, W., Featherstone, C., Feely, R. A., Fransson, A., Goyet, C., Greenwood, N., Gregor, L., Hankin, S., Hardman-Mountford, N. J., Harlay, J., Hauck, J., Hoppema, M., Humphreys, M. P., Hunt, C. W., Huss, B., Ibánhez, J. S. P., Johannessen, T., Keeling, R., Kitidis, V., Körtzinger, A., Kozyr, A., Krasakopoulou, E., Kuwata, A., Landschützer, P., Lauvset, S. K., Lefèvre, N., Lo Monaco, C., Manke, A., Mathis, J. T., Merlivat, L., Millero, F. J., Monteiro, P. M. S., Munro, D. R., Murata, A., Newberger, T., Omar, A. M., Ono, T., Paterson, K., Pearce, D., Pierrot, D., Robbins, L. L., Saito, S., Salisbury, J., Schlitzer, R., Schneider, B., Schweitzer, R., Sieger, R., Skjelvan, I., Sullivan, K. F., Sutherland, S. C., Sutton, A. J., Tadokoro, K., Telszewski, M., Tuma, M., van Heuven, S. M. A. C., Vandemark, D., Ward, B., Watson, A. J., and Xu, S. (2016), A multi-decade record of high-quality fCO2 data in version 3 of the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT). Earth System Science Data, 8, 383–413, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-8-383-2016.

August, 2021

A new online data submission system called Scientific Data Information System (SDIS) has become operational, thanks to the development efforts by NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) (video tutorial, documentation). SDIS is the newly recommended way of submitting data to OCADS.

November, 2021

Warmest welcome to Errol Ronje for joining the OCADS team. Errol has a background in marine mammal research and was hired as a federal employee to work on the archiving of biological OA data. With Errol's hiring, OCADS is now opening its data management services to all OA investigators from the international community.

October, 2020

An upgraded version of the OCADS data portal was released. One of its major improvements over the old portal is its enhanced spatial constraint capabilities. The new portal allows users to conduct their spatial constraints based on the actual station information, instead of its bounding box info for discrete bottle based data. This significantly improves the accuracy of the spatial constraint.

May, 2019

OCADS team member Li-Qing Jiang was awarded a new proposal titled Synthesis and visualization of carbonate and nutrient data on North America's ocean margins by NOAA's Ocean Acidification Program (OAP). His co-investigators include: Dr. Richard A. Feely (PMEL), Dr. Rik Wanninkhof (PMEL), Dr. Simone Alin (PMEL) and Dr. Leticia Barbero (AOML). The goal of this proposal is to develop a first-ever discrete bottle based coastal OA data product that will cover both the surface and the subsurface coastal ocean.

December, 2019

A global OA indicator study led by OCADS team member Li-Qing Jiang with the title of Surface ocean pH and buffer capacity: past, present and future was published in Nature Scientific Reports (press releases: NCEI, UMD). By linking modeled carbon system trends with observed modern pH distribution, this hybrid data product benefits from recent improvements in both model design and observational data coverage, thus providing improved regional OA trajectories than the model output could alone, therefore, will help guide the regional OA adaptation strategies.

Citation: Jiang, L.-Q., B. Carter, R. A. Feely, S. Lauvset, and A. Olsen (2019), Surface ocean pH and buffer capacity: past, present and future. Nature Scientific Reports, 9, 18624, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55039-4.

January, 2014

A new data management project called Ocean Carbon Data System (OCADS) was established at NCEI. As a sister project of OADS, the OCADS project serves as a continuation of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC-Oceans, defunded by September 30, 2017). OCADS leverages the same data management infrastructure as OADS, and provides data management services for ocean carbon data (along with isotope and tracder gas, etc.) to the international oceanographic community for free. The OCADS project has now been merged with the Ocean Acidification Data Stewardship (OADS) project to form the new Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (OCADS).

February, 2014

As a pioneer of ocean carbon data management, Alex Kozyr joined NOAA/NCEI as an affiliate staff to work in the newly established Ocean Carbon Data System (OCADS) project. Before joining NOAA, Alex was working at the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee). Alex brought over two decades of data management experiences to NOAA. In addition to archiving, Alex also provides data management support for the Global Data Analysis Product Version 2 (GLODAPv2), and the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) projects.

January, 2014

A new Rich Metadata Management System (RMMS) was developed to display the collected "rich" metadata information in a user-friendly format. The RMMS has three components: (a) an Excel based submission form to collect the "rich" metadata information, (b) an XML template to store the collected information, and (c) an HTML display format to pull the information out of the XML files and display them in a user-friendly format. The list of metadata elements displayed and how they are organized are entirely driven by the OA research community. Here is an example of a data set that is managed using the RMMS. The RMMS is one of the main channels to ensure the OA datasets we manage here at NCEI are documented in a way that best serves the needs of the research community. If you have any comments to improve our display format, please don't hesitate to send a message to [noaa.ocads (at) noaa.gov].

June, 2014

A new “rich” ocean acidification metadata template was developed in an effort led by OCADS team member Li-Qing Jiang with a bottom-up approach by listening to the needs of the OA research community (paper, L&O e-Lecture, poster).

The new metadata template relies on a unique design called variable metadata section with all child metadata elements of a specific variable grouped together around that variable to allow for the rich metadata documentation of all oceanographic variables. It also introduced many new metadata elements, including:

  • The use of observation type to indicate how an OA variable was observed, e.g., laboratory experiment, or surface underway, etc.
  • The use of Insitu/manipulation/response to indicate whether an oceanographic property was reported at in-situ condition, or was artificially manipulated, or was a response variable under a laboratory experiment setup.
  • The use of measured or calculate to indicate whether a reported oceanographic property was directly measured, or calculated from other parameters using programs like the CO2SYS.
  • the use of Biological subject to indicate a marine organism name.
  • The use of Species Identification ID for standardized documentation of a species.
  • The use of Life stage of the biological subject to indicate its growth stage (larvae, juvenile, or adult).

Although this new template was developed with the goal of documenting laboratory experiment based OA data, it was extended to become a universal OA metadata template that is capable of serving all types of OA data to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of OA data management. As the heart and soul of the OCADS data management, this template is the foundation of all OCADS components, i.e., the SDIS submission system, the OCADS rich metadata management system, and the OCADS data portal.

L-QJ is grateful to all the scientists, especially the many biological OA experts who contributed their comments to this metadata template development. Some metadata elements of the ocean carbon parameters, especially those of partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) benefited from a previous template as used by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CIDAC-Oceans).
Citation: Jiang, L.-Q., S. A. O'Connor, K. M. Arzayus, and A. R. Parsons (2015), A metadata template for ocean acidification data, Earth System Science Data, 7, 117-125, doi:10.5194/essd-7-117-2015.

September, 2014

A global OA indicator study led by OCADS team member Li-Qing Jiang with the title of Climatological distribution of aragonite saturation state in the global oceans was published in the journal of Global Biogeochemical Cycles (press releases: NOAA, AGU).

Citation: Jiang, L.-Q., R. A. Feely, B. Carter, D. J. Greeley, D. K. Gledhill, and K. M. Arzayus (2015), Climatological distribution of aragonite saturation state in the global oceans. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 29, 1656-1673, doi:10.1002/2015GB005198.

May, 2014

A new user-friendly data discovery and access interface called OA portal was released. It relies on technologies such as auto-complete, drop down menus, etc. to enable users to search for OA datasets at NCEI's archive based on their observed properties, observation types, observation dates, and other information in a easy-to-user GUI interface. Before the OA Portal was established, it would require a user to have the knowledge of writing complex search syntaxes in order to conduct searches based on multiple keywords. The OA portal has been decommissioned and replaced with an upgraded portal called OCADS Data Portal.

October, 2012

The Ocean Acidification Data Stwardship (OADS) project was established thanks to the funding from the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (OAP). The overarching goal of the OADS project is to safeguard all OA data generated with funding from OAP and help OAP investigators meet their NOAA data management requirements. Additionally, OADS will serve the ocean acidification (OA) community by providing dedicated and online data discovery, access to NODC-hosted and distributed authoritative data sources, long-term archival, coordinated data flow, and scientific stewardship for a diverse range of OA and other chemical, physical, and biological oceanographic data. As of April 2022, the OADS project has been replaced with the new Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (OCADS).