On behalf of the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) scientific community, we are proud to announce the release of SOCAT Version 5! SOCAT is a synthesis activity by the international marine carbon research community (>100 contributors). SOCAT version 5 has 21.5 million quality-controlled, surface ocean fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) observations from 1957 to January 2017 for the global oceans and coastal seas. Calibrated sensor data are also available. Automation allows annual, public releases of SOCAT. The SOCAT data is discoverable, accessible and citable. SOCAT enables quantification of the ocean carbon sink and ocean acidification and evaluation of ocean biogeochemical models. Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2017, SOCAT represents a milestone in biogeochemical and climate research, and in informing policy.
The SOCAT website (www.socat.info) provides access to synthesis and gridded data products for version 5. Users can explore the data products via two powerful, interactive online viewers, the Data Set Viewer and the Gridded Data Viewer. Alternatively users can download of the synthesis and gridded products with Matlab code available for reading these files. (…)
IOCCP, June 2017. Further information.
