WOCE A17 Cruise: Atlantic Ocean Carbon Chemistry and Hydrography

NCEI Accession 0115157 contains surface underway, discrete sample, and profile data from the R/V Maurice Ewing cruise WOCE A17 (Legs 1 & 2) in the North and South Atlantic Ocean from January to March 1994. The dataset includes measurements of carbon dioxide partial pressure, dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, CFCs, nutrients, and standard hydrographic variables like temperature and salinity. These data were collected as part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment to study the ocean's role in the global carbon cycle and climate.

Use Cases

• Quantifying air-sea CO2 fluxes based on partial pressure measurements in water and atmosphere.
• Tracing water mass age and circulation using Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC-11, CFC-12) concentrations.
• Calculating ocean acidification parameters from paired Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC) and Total Alkalinity (TA) measurements.
• Profiling oceanographic conditions with Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) and bottle data for hydrographic analysis.

Strengths

• Multi-platform dataset combining surface underway, discrete bottle, and vertical profile data collection methods.
• Part of the large-scale WOCE Hydrographic Program, which collected data from approximately 23,000 stations across 94 cruises.
• Includes a wide suite of co-located biogeochemical parameters relevant for carbon cycle studies.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, specific column names, and license information are not provided in any source.
• Sources conflict on the exact institutional affiliations of some principal investigators.
• The dataset's temporal coverage is limited to a single cruise over approximately three months in 1994.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Collection Method

Data collected via shipboard CTD casts, carbon dioxide gas analyzers, equilibrators, and water sample bottles.

Time Range

1994-01-04 to 1994-03-21

Freshness

Metadata was last updated on one platform in March 2026, but the underlying data collection ended in March 1994.

Geography

North Atlantic Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean