Ocean Acidification

The oceanographic databases described by this atlas series greatly expands on the World Ocean Database 1998 (WOD98) product. We have expanded these earlier databases to include data from new instrument types such as profiling floats and new variables such as pCO2 and TCO2. Previous oceanographic databases including the NODC/WDC profile archives, and products derived from these databases, have proven to be of great utility to the international oceanographic, climate research, and operational environmental forecasting communities. In particular, the objectively analyzed fields of temperature and salinity derived from these databases have been used in a variety of ways. These include use as boundary and/or initial conditions in numerical ocean circulation models, for verification of numerical simulations of the ocean, as a form of “sea truth” for satellite measurements such as altimetric observations of sea surface height, and for planning oceanographic expeditions. Increasingly nutrient fields are being used to initialize and/or verify biogeochemical models of the world ocean. The databases, and products based on these databases, are critical for support of international assessment programs such as the Intergovernmental Program on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations.

P. P. Murphy, M. E. Conkright, T. P. Boyer, J. I. Antonov, O. K. Baranova, H. E. Garcia, R., Gelfeld, D. Johnson, R. A. Locarnini, T. D. O’Brien, I. Smolyar, C. Stephens, 2002: World Ocean Database 2001, Volume 6: Temporal Distribution of pH, Alkalinity, pCO2 and tCO2 Data. S. Levitus, Ed., NOAA Atlas NESDIS 47, U.S. Government Printing Office, Wash., D.C., 235 pp., CD-ROMs. Web site and report.