Oct. 15, 2024

The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project has received 3 additional years of funding from the US National Science Foundation, extending support of the program through 2027.  SOCCOM was first funded in 2014 and over the past 10 years has built and maintained an array of BGC-Argo floats with nitrate, pH, oxygen, and bio-optical sensors in the Southern Ocean, as well as developing a biogeochemical Southern State Estimate (B-SOSE) and carrying out high-resolution earth system modeling and intercomparisons.  SOCCOM observational and model data have been used by researchers around the world and have resulted in over 200 internal and over 50 external publications.

Founded and administered by Princeton for the first 10 years, the SOCCOM project will now move to Scripps Institution of Oceanography – UC San Diego under the leadership of PI Professor Lynne Talley .  Under the new program, SIO will join the University of Washington in float production, adding BGC-SOLO floats to the array.  The University of Hawaii will be a new partner, contributing to data analysis and joining the overall consortium of UCSD, Princeton, MBARI, U. Washington, U. Arizona, and Rutgers University, and an expanded leadership team will steer the project.

Extension of the SOCCOM observational record will allow tracking of annual changes in pH, air-sea CO2 flux, and carbon inventories, and their linkages with physically and biologically driven processes. Two new biological sensors (downwelling irradiance and a dual excitation wavelength chlorophyll fluorometer) will be added to the array to enhance study of potentially changing ocean biomass, productivity, and export. The state estimate will be expanded to global coverage to enable study of connections between the Southern Ocean and regions to the north, particularly exchanges of carbon and nutrients with northern oceans.  And the longer set of float-based observations in this proposal will allow us to assess and quantify simulations of climate-scale trends (seasonality, ENSO, SAM, etc.) and clarify the current state and processes operating in the Southern Ocean.

With these enhanced capabilities, the SOCCOM team aims to:

  • resolve seasonal to decadal time scales of physical, biogeochemical and biological variables,
  • quantify the changing carbon, nitrate, and oxygen inventories and fluxes,
  • assess current and future ocean acidification, ocean greening and biogeochemical consequences,
  • develop a system optimized for predicting the trajectory of the changing Southern Ocean, and
  • simulate potential mcDR impacts and document the effects of any human intervention as it occurs.

Read more about the SOCCOM3 award in the Scripps press release.