The U.S.
launched the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) in the late 1980s
to study the ocean carbon cycle. An ambitious goal was set to understand
the controls on the concentrations and fluxes of carbon and associated
nutrients in the ocean. A new field of ocean biogeochemistry emerged
with an emphasis on quality measurements of carbon system parameters
and interdisciplinary field studies of the biological, chemical and
physical process which control the ocean carbon cycle. As we studied
ocean biogeochemistry, we learned that our simple views of carbon uptake
and transport were severely limited, and a new "wave" of ocean
science was born. U.S. JGOFS has been supported primarily by the
U.S. National Science Foundation in collaboration with the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, the Department of Energy and the Office of Naval
Research. U.S. JGOFS, ended in 2005 with the conclusion of the
Synthesis and Modeling Project (SMP).
