JGOFS: a Retrospective View
The international JGOFS project was initiated in 1987 and carried out its first major process study in the North Atlantic in 1989. Since then major process studies have been made in the Equatorial Pacific, the Arabian Sea, the Southern Ocean, and the Nort
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The international JGOFS project was initiated in 1987 and carried out its first major process study in the North Atlantic in 1989. Since then major process studies have been made in the Equatorial Pacific, the Arabian Sea, the Southern Ocean, and the North Pacific, major time series have been initiated in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans, and a world-wide survey of ocean CO2 has been made in conjunction with WOCE. During the last couple of years the vast datasets from these activities have begun to be synthesised into a coherent picture of the carbon, and other element, cycles in the ocean. Early results of this synthesis are summarised in recent reviews (Field et al. 2000; Fasham et al. 2001) and are the subject of the chapters in this book. I do not intend to repeat here the scientific conclusions of these reviews but will look back over the last 15 years to give an overall survey of what work has been carried out by JGOFS, and discuss how well the goals and expectations of the original plans have been realised.
11.1 The JGOFS Science Plan All properly brought-up international science projects are now required to produce a detailed science plan before any funding agency will provide any money. JGOFS was exceedingly ill behaved in that it organised the North Atlantic Bloom Experiment (NABE) a year before it published its Science Plan (SCOR 1990). This was possible because of the previous planning that had already been done by the US JGOFS community and because of the tremendous enthusiasm on the part of the international community for the general concept of JGOFS. The Science Plan was further developed in the JGOFS Implementation Plan (SCOR 1992). I will now discuss the various components of the Science Plan and review how the national and international JGOFS programmes have contributed to these components.
11.2 The Process Studies The central aim of the process studies was to provide the basic data for conceptual models of the biogeochemical processes needed to explain and predict global-scale pat-
M. J. R. Fasham (ed.), Ocean Biogeochemistry © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003
terns of element cycling between the atmosphere, ocean, and sediments. In the Science Plan it was envisaged that four major process studies would be carried out in (1) the North Atlantic, (2) the Equatorial Pacific, (3) the Northwest Indian Ocean, and (4) the Southern Ocean. As mentioned earlier, the first JGOFS process study, the North Atlantic Bloom Experiment (NABE), took place in 1989. It was based around a series of stations along 20° W from 18° N to 72° N originally planned by German oceanographers to celebrate the centenary of Victor Hensen’s 1889 Plankton Expedition (Ducklow 1989). The main international effort (Germany, Netherlands, UK and US) was focused on 47° N and 60° N covering the period from late April to late August (Ducklow and Harris 1993). In the spring of the same year the Canadian component took place further west (40° W–50° W) between latitudes 32° N and 47° N (Harrison et al. 1993). During 1990–19
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