Global compilation of Carbon-13 measurements during 1990-2005 in dissolved inorganic carbon (δ¹³C_DIC)

A. Schmittner¹, N. Gruber², A. C. Mix¹, R. M. Key³, A. Tagliabue⁴, and T. K. Westberry⁵

¹College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA
²Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
³Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
⁴School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
⁵Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA

Data and Documentation Files      &nbsp

The primary data source for the δ¹³C_DIC measurements is the Web Accessible Visualization and Extraction System (W.A.V.E.S) at the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC). On 27 August 2010 we extracted data from two databases within CDIAC: First, from the Global Data Analysis Project GLODAP (Key et al., 2004) and second, from the Carbon Dioxide in the Atlantic Ocean (CARINA) data synthesis project mainly from WOCE and CLIVAR expeditions. The δ¹³C_DIC data on file at CDIAC have not been quality controlled. In the GLODAP database, some cruises (for example, 316N145_5 and INDIGO_123) had obvious bad data, and these were excluded from our compilation. From the remaining 31 GLODAP expeditions, we removed bottle numbers > 70 from seven cruises in order to exclude large Volume (LV) samples, many of which had large negative biases. From the CARINA database cruise 64TR19900417 was excluded due to obvious bad data, leaving 18 cruises. The remaining combined GLODAP and CARINA database contains 17,989 δ¹³C_DIC data for the time period from 1990–2005 from all oceans and all depths. These data were supplemented by 632 measurements from 1990 to 1998 made at Charles (Dave) Keeling’s laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, described by Gruber et al. (1999), and by one transect (50 data points) from the northeast Pacific measured in Alan Mix’s laboratory at Oregon State University, published along with nutrient data by Ortiz et al. (2000). The Keeling dataset is also available at NCEI accession 0115689, although here we used one single data file provided by N. Gruber. We do not use measurements prior to 1990 (such as all GEOSECS and TTO data). Due to unresolved intercalibration issues between laboratories the accuracy is currently estimated to be 0.1–0.2‰ (A. McNichol, personal communication, 2012). The combined data set contains a total of 18,670 δ¹³C_DIC measurements.

Please cite this dataset as:
Schmittner, A., Gruber, N., Mix, A. C., Key, R. M., Tagliabue, A., and Westberry, T. K.: Biology and air–sea gas exchange controls on the distribution of carbon isotope ratios (δ¹³C) in the ocean, Biogeosciences, 10, 5793-5816, doi:10.5194/bg-10-5793-2013, 2013.