Preparation and Distribution of DOC Consensus Reference Materials

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).In this project, investigators at the University of Miami will continue producing and distributing a consensus reference material (CRM) program that was first developed in 1999 in support of consistent, high quality measurements of dissolved organic carbon in seawater by the international ocean chemistry community. With continued strong international efforts to investigate the marine carbon cycle, the existing CRM program will continue to provide a critically important benchmark for globally comparable marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) measurements. Marine DOC measurements are currently made at more than 50 laboratories in the United States and at a greater number of laboratories in the rest of the world. Until this CRM program began distribution of reference materials, analyses made in these many laboratories were not linked by a common reference material and were, therefore, not comparable. Because there had not been an independent and common standard available against which calibrations of individual analyses could be checked there was little agreement amongst the majority of the laboratories making the measurements.Since its inception, the program has generated ca. 80,000 ampoules of deep seawater and ca. 60,000 ampoules of low carbon water ampoules. So far, these ampoules have been distributed to 230 US and international laboratories in 30 nations. In recent years the Miami group has been shipping ca. 17,500 ampoules per year. With renewal of the reference material program for a fourth 3-year period of support, deep ocean water containing approximately 40 ìmol C/kg of biologically refractory dissolved organic carbon and low carbon reference water will continue to be available to the marine DOC community. Broader Impacts: With renewal of support for this work the US and international ocean carbon research communities will continue to produce high-quality measurements of a major marine carbon reservoir, thereby advancing society's ability to assess changes in the marine carbon cycle and its involvement in global climate change.