Changes in ocean heat, carbon content, and ventilation : a review of the first decade of GO-SHIP Global Repeat Hydrography

Abstract

The ocean, a central component of Earth’s climate system, is changing. Given the global scope of these changes, highly accurate measurements of physical and biogeochemical properties need to be conducted over the full water column, spanning the ocean basins from coast to coast, and repeated every decade at a minimum, with a ship-based observing system. Since the late 1970s, when the Geochemical Ocean Sections Study (GEOSECS) conducted the first global survey of this kind, the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), and now the Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) have collected these “reference standard” data that allow quantification of ocean heat and carbon uptake, and variations in salinity, oxygen, nutrients, and acidity on basin scales. The evolving GO-SHIP measurement suite also provides new global information about dissolved organic carbon, a large bioactive reservoir of carbon.