Homepage: http://www.wdc-mare.org/projects/jgofs (Original website from http://www.uib.no/jgofs/ archived at WDC-MARE)
Funding: National
Type: International IGBP project
Runtime: 1990-2002
Coordination: International Project Office (IPO), University of Bergen
Data management: Data Management Task Team (DMTT); final compilation at WDC Oceanography, Silver Spring and WDC-MARE
JGOFS data sets, archived in the data library PANGAEA®
The oceans contain some 50 times as much carbon dioxide as the atmosphere, and small changes in the ocean carbon cycle can therefore have large atmospheric consequences. Such changes are believed to have had important feedback effects on climate during the transitions to and from ice ages; they may also have important consequences for the global climate and environment, and for many human activities in the next 50-100 years, as a result of rapidly rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Models indicate that the oceans are currently taking up at least a third of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide by dissolving it into water that then loses contact with the atmosphere because of sinking or vertical mixing. Biological processes complicate the oceanic carbon cycle although they probably do not affect much the present uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, they are important because they (1) are the determinant of the natural background distribution of carbon; (2) complicate our efforts to measure the background distribution due to the seasonal variation in biological processes; and (3) have the potential to amplify chemical and physical effects, via biological feedbacks in the system.
During the runtime of JGOFS the data management was in the responsibility of the national data centers, advised by the DMTT and IPO. All data collected are public available in its original format, published on DVD by WDC Oceanography in 2003 (JGOFS International Collection, Volume 1: Discrete Datasets 1989-2000). The final harmonization and compilation was carried out at WDC-MARE and published in WDC-MARE Reports Vol. 3.
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