The Global Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP) is a synthesis project bringing together

oceanographic Oceanography (), also known as oceanology and ocean science, is the scientific study of the oceans. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of topics, including ecosystem dynamics; ocean currents, waves, and geophysical fluid dynamics ...

data, featuring two major releases as of 2018. The central goal of GLODAP is to generate a global

climatology Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , '' -logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of stud ...

of the

World Ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the worl ...

carbon cycle The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere of the Earth. Carbon is the main component of biological compounds as well as ...

for use in studies of both its natural and anthropogenically forced states. GLODAP is funded by the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

. The first GLODAP release (v1.1) was produced from data collected during the 1990s by research cruises on the

World Ocean Circulation Experiment The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) was a component of the international World Climate Research Program, and aimed to establish the role of the World Ocean in the Earth's climate system. WOCE's field phase ran between 1990 and 1998, and ...

Joint Global Ocean Flux Study The Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) was an international research programme on the fluxes of carbon between the atmosphere and ocean, and within the ocean interior. Initiated by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), the prog ...

and Ocean-Atmosphere Exchange Study programmes. The second GLODAP release (v2) extended the first using data from cruises from 2000 to 2013. The data are available both as individual "bottle data" from sample sites, and as interpolated fields on a standard longitude, latitude, depth grid.

Dataset

The GLODAPv1.1 climatology contains analysed fields of "present day" (1990s)

dissolved inorganic carbon Dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) is the sum of the aqueous species of inorganic carbon in a solution. Carbon compounds can be distinguished as either organic or inorganic, and as dissolved or particulate, depending on their composition. Organic c ...

(DIC),

alkalinity Alkalinity (from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is the capacity of water to resist acidification. It should not be confused with basicity, which is an absolute measurement on the pH scale. Alkalinity is the strength of ...

carbon-14 Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and coll ...

(¹⁴C),

CFC-11 Trichlorofluoromethane, also called freon-11, CFC-11, or R-11, is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC). It is a colorless, faintly ethereal, and sweetish-smelling liquid that boils around room temperature. CFC-11 is a Class 1 ozone-depleting substance ...

and

CFC-12 Dichlorodifluoromethane (R-12) is a colorless gas usually sold under the brand name Freon-12, and a chlorofluorocarbon halomethane (CFC) used as a refrigerant and aerosol spray#Aerosol propellants, aerosol spray propellant. Complying with the Montr ...

. The fields consist of

three-dimensional Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called ''parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the informal ...

, objectively-analysed global grids at 1° horizontal resolution, interpolated onto 33 standardised vertical intervals from the surface (0 m) to the

abyssal The abyssal zone or abyssopelagic zone is a layer of the pelagic zone of the ocean. "Abyss" derives from the Greek word , meaning bottomless. At depths of , this zone remains in perpetual darkness. It covers 83% of the total area of the ocean an ...

seafloor The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of ...

(5500 m). In terms of temporal resolution, the relative scarcity of the source data mean that, unlike the

World Ocean Atlas The World Ocean Atlas (WOA) is a data product of the Ocean Climate Laboratory of the National Oceanographic Data Center (U.S.). The WOA consists of a climatology of fields of ''in situ'' ocean properties for the World Ocean. It was first produced ...

, averaged fields are only produced for the annual time-scale. The GLODAP climatology is missing data in certain oceanic provinces including the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...

, the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...

, the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...

and

Maritime Southeast Asia Maritime Southeast Asia comprises the countries of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and East Timor. Maritime Southeast Asia is sometimes also referred to as Island Southeast Asia, Insular Southeast Asia or Oceanic Sout ...

. Additionally, analysis has attempted to separate natural from anthropogenic DIC, to produce fields of pre-

industrial Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominate ...

(18th century) DIC and "present day" anthropogenic . This separation allows estimation of the magnitude of the ocean

sink A sink is a bowl-shaped plumbing fixture for washing hands, dishwashing, and other purposes. Sinks have a tap (faucet) that supply hot and cold water and may include a spray feature to be used for faster rinsing. They also include a drain to ...

for anthropogenic , and is important for studies of phenomena such as

ocean acidification Ocean acidification is the reduction in the pH value of the Earth’s ocean. Between 1751 and 2021, the average pH value of the ocean surface has decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14. The root cause of ocean acidification is carbon dioxid ...

.Orr, J. C. ''et al.'' (2005)
Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms.
''Nature'' 437, 681–686Raven, J. A. ''et al.'' (2005)
Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Royal Society, London, UK However, as anthropogenic DIC is chemically and physically identical to natural DIC, this separation is difficult. GLODAP used a mathematical technique known as C* (C-star) to deconvolute anthropogenic from natural DIC (there are a number of alternative methods). This uses information about ocean

biogeochemistry Biogeochemistry is the scientific discipline that involves the study of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment (including the biosphere, the cryosphere, t ...

and surface disequilibrium together with other ocean tracers including carbon-14, CFC-11 and CFC-12 (which indicate

water mass An oceanographic water mass is an identifiable body of water with a common formation history which has physical properties distinct from surrounding water. Properties include temperature, salinity, chemical - isotopic ratios, and other physical ...

age) to try to separate out natural from that added during the ongoing anthropogenic transient. The technique is not straightforward and has associated errors, although it is gradually being refined to improve it. Its findings are generally supported by independent predictions made by dynamic models. The GLODAPv2 climatology largely repeats the earlier format, but makes use of the large number of observations of the ocean's carbon cycle made over the intervening period (2000–2013). The analysed "present-day" fields in the resulting dataset are normalised to year 2002. Anthropogenic carbon was estimated in GLODAPv2 using a "transit-time distribution" (TTD) method (an approach using a

Green's function In mathematics, a Green's function is the impulse response of an inhomogeneous linear differential operator defined on a domain with specified initial conditions or boundary conditions. This means that if \operatorname is the linear differential ...

). In addition to updated fields of DIC (total and anthropogenic) and alkalinity, GLODAPv2 includes fields of seawater pH and calcium carbonate saturation state (Ω; omega). The latter is a non-dimensional number calculated by dividing the local

carbonate A carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid (H2CO3), characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, a polyatomic ion with the formula . The word ''carbonate'' may also refer to a carbonate ester, an organic compound containing the carbonate g ...

ion concentration by the ambient saturation concentration for calcium carbonate (for the biomineral polymorphs

calcite Calcite is a Carbonate minerals, carbonate mineral and the most stable Polymorphism (materials science), polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It is a very common mineral, particularly as a component of limestone. Calcite defines hardness 3 on ...

and

aragonite Aragonite is a carbonate mineral, one of the three most common naturally occurring crystal forms of calcium carbonate, (the other forms being the minerals calcite and vaterite). It is formed by biological and physical processes, including prec ...

), and relates to an oceanographic property, the

carbonate compensation depth Carbonate compensation depth (CCD) is the depth in the oceans below which the rate of supply of calcite ( calcium carbonate) lags behind the rate of solvation, such that no calcite is preserved. Shells of animals therefore dissolve and carbonate ...

. Values of this below 1 indicate

undersaturation Undersaturation is a state of a solution that contains less of a dissolved material than could be dissolved by that quantity of solvent under normal circumstances. It can also refer to a vapor of a compound that has a lower (partial) pressure than ...

, and potential dissolution, while values above 1 indicate

supersaturation In physical chemistry, supersaturation occurs with a solution when the concentration of a solute exceeds the concentration specified by the value of solubility at equilibrium. Most commonly the term is applied to a solution of a solid in a liqu ...

, and relative stability.

Gallery

The following panels show sea surface concentrations of fields prepared by GLODAPv1.1. The "pre-industrial" is the 18th century, while "present-day" is approximately the 1990s. The following panels show sea surface concentrations of fields prepared by GLODAPv2. The "pre-industrial" is the 18th century, while "present-day" is normalised to 2002. Note that these properties are shown in

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

units (per kilogram of seawater) rather than the

volume Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). The de ...

units (per cubic metre of seawater) used in the GLODAPv1.1 panels.

References

External links

GLODAP website
Bjerknes Climate Data Centre
GLODAP v1.1 website

GLODAP v2 website
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration {{physical oceanography Biological oceanography Carbon Chemical oceanography Chlorofluorocarbons Oceanography Physical oceanography

Dataset

Gallery

See also

References

External links