In October 2007, the Global Carbon Group at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) installed an instrument to measure CO2 in surface water on the Volunteer Observing Ship R/V Xuelong. Compared to research vessels of similar size, the R/V Xuelong affords scientists an opportunity to gather data that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. In addition, the ship regularly repeats the same cruise track thus allowing the instruments to monitor small changes in the ocean and atmosphere. Eventually, a long series of high quality observations will be available that will provide new insights on weekly, monthly, seasonal, and longer time cycles.

Every 4 hours, the instrument takes at least 3 air measurements and 40 water measurements while the ship is underway. The data is sent to AOML where it is processed, and the final data is posted to this web site. Files are arranged by year using the cruise designation xueyymm.csv where yy is the 2-digit year and mm is the month. Each file has an accompanying Readme file. For each cruise, links to download the data and Readme file appear next to a cruise track map that is color coded by pCO2 level. To download a particular file, select the year from the drop-down list box and click on GO. All data files for that year will be on one page.