The southern ocean plays a disproportionately large in global carbon cycling and has remained chronically under-sampled due to its remote location and extreme conditions. The NSF and NASA sponsored…

This is a $1,064,423 grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey for the continuation of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project. SOCCOM aims to better understand the role of the Southern Ocean in global carbon cycling through the deployment of 180 bio-optical floats that provide in-situ measurements of phytoplankton, particulates, and carbon dynamics. This award, designated as "SOCCOM-2", will fund the acquisition and integration of optical sensors onto the float platforms, as well as the collection of calibration/validation data and quality control of the float measurements. The contract does not utilize any set-aside designations. Rutgers, as a major research university, has a long history of receiving NSF and other federal agency grants and contracts to support its wide-ranging scientific research and development activities.

The southern ocean plays a disproportionately large in global carbon cycling and has remained chronically under-sampled due to its remote location and extreme conditions. The NSF and NASA sponsored soccom project made an significant effort to address by deploying 180 BIO-argo floats that provided sustained year round circumpolar sampling. The BIO-optical floats have provided measurements of optical backscatter and chlorophyll fluorescence providing an unprecedented in situ array to complement ocean color remote sensing to provide a comprehensive 4D picture the phytoplankton, particle, and carbon dynamics for the southern ocean. NSF recently funded soccom-2 to continue the deployment of BIO-argo systems. The program funds the biogeochemical floats, but does provide fund for optical measurements (backscatter and chlorophyll fluorescence). This proposal seeks to 1) acquire optical sensors to be incorporated into the soccum-2 floats, 2) collect in situ calibration/validation samples (particulate organic carbon and hplc-measured phytoplankton pigments) during float deployments, and 3) conduct quality control on the data from the deployed floats.