SIC Sub-group 1: Surface Ocean Systems

Chair: Nicolas Metzl (France)

NEWS UPDATES

January 2010
Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) -Atlantic and Southern Oceans regional meeting planned for May/June 2010

During the SOCAT meeting in June 2009 in Norwich, UK (sponsored by IOCCP, SOLAS/COST and IMBER) and the SSG IOCCP last September 2009 in Jena, Germany (ICDC8), the SOCAT-Atlantic and Southern Oceans group decided to organise a meeting in May/June 2010 in order to progress on QC2-SOCAT, SOCAT science, as well as RECAPP project.
Concerning the Southern Ocean, recent studies have suggested the CO2 sink has stabilized or possibly decreased in recent years. This has to be examined in more detail for at least the last 20 years as it could explain current trends in the global carbon budget (e.g. Nature G. paper published in Nov 2009, Le Quere et al) and in the future (e.g. Lenton et al, GRL, 2009).

June 2009
Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) Regional Workshop
A SOCAT Atlantic and Southern Oceans Regional Workshop was held in Norwich, UK, 25th-26th June 2009. The meeting was organised by Ute schuster and Dorothee Bakker. Report available here.

May 2009
Sub-group 1 Annual Report now available
The Annual Report by Nicolas Metzl can be downloaded here.

April 2009
Special issue of Deep-Sea Research II: Surface Ocean CO2 Variability and Vulnerabilities
Volume 56, Numbers 8–10, April 2009. Guest Editors: Sylvie Roy, Nicolas Metzl, BronteTilbrook, Scott Doney, Richard Feely, Dorothee Bakker, and Corinne Le Quere.

June 2008
Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) Project
http://www.socat.info
At the “Surface Ocean CO2 Variability and Vulnerability” workshop in April 2007, co-sponsored by IOCCP, SOLAS, IMBER, and the Global Carbon Project, participants agreed to establish a standard global surface CO2 data set that would bring together, in a common format, all publicly available surface CO2 data.
The IOCCP and the SOLAS-IMBER Carbon Coordination Group established 5 regional working groups to identify data not yet included in the global standard data set by December 2007. The groups are: North Atlantic (including Arctic) – Ute Schuster (UEA, UK) Pacific – Richard Feely (NOAA/PMEL, USA) Southern Ocean – Bronte Tilbrook (CSIRO, Australia) Indian Ocean – V.V.S.S. Sarma (NIO, India) Coastal Ocean – Arthur Chen (National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan) and Alberto Borges (U. Liege, Belgium)
Further information

In June 2008, the IOCCP, along with CARBOOCEAN and the SOLAS-IMBER Joint Carbon Group, held a 2nd technical meeting to discuss 2nd level QC and regional synthesis issues. The report from that meeting is now available here.

June 2007
Surface ocean pCO2 variability and vulnerabilities workshop, 11-14 April 2007, UNESCO, Paris, France
Contributed by N.Metzl and B. Tilbrook (co-chairs). In October 2005, the first joint meeting of the IOCCP and the SOLAS-IMBER Carbon group (SIC) was held during the 7th International CO2 conference in Broomfield, Colorado. A major outcome of the Broomfield gathering was an agreement for IOCCP to work with the SIC-SOS sub-group (Surface Ocean Systems) to plan an international workshop on the scientific basis for VOS network design and data synthesis efforts related to CO2 sources and sinks in the ocean. The workshop was titled the Surface Ocean CO2 Variability and Vulnerabilities (SOCOVV), and was planned and held at UNESCO, Paris (co-chairs N.Metzl, IPSL/France, B.Tilbrook, CSIRO/Australia and R.Dargaville/IOCCP). The meeting was co-sponsored by IOCCP, SOLAS, IMBER, and the Global Carbon Project.

The main goals of the meeting were:
(i) to review our knowledge of the air-sea CO2 flux variability and uncertainties from seasonal to decadal scales, and to promote global CO2 data synthesis activities,
(ii) to address new questions regarding the vulnerability of the oceanic carbon cycle,
(iii) to obtain prior to the meeting, at national and regional levels, information on recent and future CO2 VOS lines, time-series stations, and ocean carbon processes studies, and
(iv) to develop future observing system and data management strategies for ocean carbon sources and sinks.

Meeting report published in IMBER Update Issue 7, June 2007.
Meeting report published in Eos Vol. 88, no. 28, 2007.