The CARBON-OPS programme

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By monitoring surface ocean pCO₂ and measuring the exchange of CO₂ between the ocean and atmosphere, we hope to help provide early warning of changes in the oceans' capacity to absorb CO₂ and the consequences for climate change.

The new data collection system developed by CARBON-OPS will supplement UK data collection efforts by Voluntary Observing Ships (VOS) in the frame of European projects such as CARBOOCEAN and its precursor CAVASOO.

CARBON-OPS objectives

The project started on 1st March 2007 and is funded for two years.

Its objectives are

To measure pCO₂ in the oceans, using five UK research ships.
To develop software enabling automated, near real-time processing, quality control (QC) and archiving of large volumes of surface ocean pCO₂ and ancillary data collected from UK research ships.
To build a database containing two years of quality-controlled pCO₂ and ancillary data, adhering to internationally agreed standards and protocols, including open access to the data.
To supply the data to end users such as the UK Met Office and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to test predictions of ocean CO₂ concentrations and to develop indicators of CO₂-related variables in the ocean.

It is led by Dr Nick Hardman-Mountford, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML). It brings together research scientists, data managers and software developers, scientific technicians and engineers, ship operators, instrument developers and operational end-users from multiple organisations. These include the University of East Anglia (UEA), the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), the National Marine Facilities - Sea Systems group (NMF-SS) at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the University of Wales, Bangor, the UK Met Office, the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP), the Centre for Observation of Air-Sea Interactions & Fluxes (CASIX), and Dartcom.

More information on the participating organisations and their role in the project is available via the partners section.