Abstract.A well-documented, publicly available, global data set of surface ocean carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) parameters has been called for by international groups for nearly two decades. The Surface Ocean CO 2 Atlas (SOCAT) project was initiated by the international marine carbon science community in 2007 with the aim of providing a comprehensive, publicly available, regularly updated, global data set of marine surface CO 2 , which had been subject to quality control (QC). Many additional CO 2 data, not yet made public via the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), were retrieved from data originators, public websites and other data centres. All data were put in a uniform format following a strict protocol. Quality control was carried out according to clearly defined criteria. Regional specialists performed the quality control, using state-of-the-art web-based tools, specially developed for accomplishing this global team effort. SOCAT version 1.5 was made public in September 2011 and holds 6.3 million quality controlled surface CO 2 data points from the global oceans and coastal seas, spanning four decades . Three types of data products are available: individual cruise files, a merged complete data set and gridded products. With the rapid expansion of marine CO 2 data collection and the importance of quantifying net global oceanic CO 2 uptake and its changes, sustained data synthesis and data access are priorities. Data coverage MotivationThe net absorption of CO 2 by the oceans, caused by rising atmospheric CO 2 concentrations since the industrial revolution, has been responsible for removing CO 2 equivalent to approximately 50 % of the fossil fuel and cement manufacturing emissions or about 30 % of the total anthropogenic emissions, including land use change (Sabine et al., 2004). Because of the availability of the carbonate ion, an important species of the dissolved inorganic carbon pool, and carbonate sediments, the oceans have a tremendous CO 2 uptake capacity and will, on timescales of ten to hundred thousand years, absorb all but a small fraction of the fossil CO 2 that has been and will be emitted (Archer et al., 1997). Meanwhile the changes in ocean CO 2 uptake, relying on factors such as ocean circulation and biology, will be among the decisive factors for the evolution of future atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and climate development (e.g., Friedlingstein et al., 2006;Riebesell et al., 2009). Presently there are two types of globally coordinated efforts that seek to resolve the dynamics of ocean CO 2 uptake through observations: repeat hydrography and surface ocean CO 2 observations (Gruber et al., 2010;Sabine et al., 2010). While repeat hydrography aims to assess variations in the ocean inventory of CO 2 on decadal timescales, surface ocean observations may resolve variations on seasonal to interannual timescales due to the higher sampling frequency. This high sampling frequency has been made possible by the advent of autonomous instruments and sensors for the nearcontinuous determination o...

Abstract. As a response to public demand for a welldocumented, quality controlled, publically available, global surface ocean carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) data set, the international marine carbon science community developed the Surface Ocean CO 2 Atlas (SOCAT). The first SOCAT product is a collection of 6.3 million quality controlled surface CO 2 data from the global oceans and coastal seas, spanning four decades . The SOCAT gridded data presented here is the second data product to come from the SOCAT project. Recognizing that some groups may have trouble working with millions of measurements, the SOCAT gridded product was generated to provide a robust, regularly spaced CO 2 fugacity ( f CO 2 ) product with minimal spatial and temporal interpolation, which should be easier to work with for many applications. Gridded SOCAT is rich with information that has not been fully explored yet (e.g., regional differences in the seasonal cycles), but also contains biases and limitations that the user needs to recognize and address (e.g., local influences on values in some coastal regions). Data coverage and parameter measuredRepository-Reference:

A well documented, publicly available, global data set of surface ocean carbon dioxide (CO₂) parameters has been called for by international groups for nearly two decades. The Surface Ocean CO₂ Atlas (SOCAT) project was initiated by the international marine carbon science community in 2007 with the aim of providing a comprehensive, publicly available, regularly updated, global data set of marine surface CO₂, which had been subject to quality control (QC). Many additional CO₂ data, not yet made public via the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), were retrieved from data originators, public websites and other data centres. All data were put in a uniform format following a strict protocol. Quality control was carried out according to clearly defined criteria. Regional specialists performed the quality control, using state-of-the-art web-based tools, specially developed for accomplishing this global team effort. SOCAT version 1.5 was made public in September 2011 and holds 6.3 million quality controlled surface CO₂ data points from the global oceans and coastal seas, spanning four decades (1968–2007). Three types of data products are available: individual cruise files, a merged complete data set and gridded products. With the rapid expansion of marine CO₂ data collection and the importance of quantifying net global oceanic CO₂ uptake and its changes, sustained data synthesis and data access are priorities