Ocean Science

Total Alkalinity and Dissolved Inorganic carbon

Total alkalinity as the name suggest reflects the ability of seawater to resist acidification in oceanographic perspective. In almost all natural waters alkalinity is produced by dissolved carbon dioxide species, bicarbonates and carbonates. Knowing the total alkalinity and the buffering capacity of any one area of the ocean helps us to correlate changes that we see in biologyto what is happening with the chemistry in the atmosphere and the ocean and form an essential carbon parameter. Dissolved inorganic carbon DIC of the seawater sample is the sum of the concentrations of the dissolved inorganic carbon species. Since alkalinity (TA) and DIC are conservative therefore both are used in ocean carbon models. Both DIC and TA can be used to estimate the air-sea CO2 fluxes in combination with satellite based approach can help us to map the large scale spatio temporal distribution in the ocean and further discussed below.

Combined satellite data (Sea Level Anomalies, Mean Dynamic Topography and Sea Surface Temperature) and in-situ (Temperature and Salinity profiles) on a 1/4 degree regular grid (from http://marine.copernicus.eu/), satellite chlorophyll MODIS AQUA 4 KM resolution data (from https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/MODIS_Aqua_L3_CHLA_Daily_4km_) for computing the DIC values are used. These productsare now being available as a part of NICES programme at 1/4 degree resolution globally. Monthly products are generated for 2014-2017 and hosted on Bhuvan-Dissolved Inorganic Carbon.

Select NICES Project - Terrestrial Sciences –Dissolved Organic Carbon and List and view the data of the selected time period.