NOAA/DOE OACES, 36 months

The original data will - wherever possible - be obtained through personal contact with the investigators that made the various measurements, and will be archived together with all the appropriate ancillary information needed to allow assessment of their quality and their use.  All necessary steps will be taken to ensure that users of the final overall data set recognize - and appreciate - the work of the original measurement groups involved in gathering such data.

Once the various individual data sets have been archived, the quality of each group of measurements will be assessed in consultation with the originating scientist, and - where needed - the original reported measurements will be adjusted to a common concentration scale to allow their use together with the other archived data sets.  The strategy used for these adjustments will be discussed with other scientists - in particular members of the Joint IOC/JGOFS Carbon Dioxide Advisory Panel - before being applied to the data; then the adjusted data will, in turn, also be archived at CDIAC, taking care that each individual data point in the final adjusted database can be linked back to its original archived data set and to the scientist or institution responsible for the measurement program.

Ultimately, we intend to provide a number of data products to the CO₂ modeling community based on this database. These will include regional and seasonal maps of the archived p(CO₂) data (including estimates of uncertainties) which can be accessed electronically.

A further goal of the work proposed here will be to make a start on developing an international strategy to incorporate future p(CO₂) measurements into this database as efficiently as possible. This will then be able to play a role as a component of a Global Ocean Observing System.