Preparation, Certification and Distribution of Reference Materials for Dissolved Organic Carbon Analysis

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This award will fund a research group at the University of Miami to continue a consensus reference material (CRM) program that was first developed in 1999 in support of consistent, high-quality measurements of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in seawater by the international ocean chemistry community. With continued strong international efforts to investigate the marine carbon cycle, the existing CRM program provides the necessary benchmark for globally comparable marine DOC measurements. Marine dissolved organic carbon measurements are made regularly 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 the beginning of the program, ca. 110,000 ampoules of deep seawater and ca. 70,000 ampoules of low carbon water ampoules have been produced and distributed to 230 US and international laboratories in 36 nations. With renewal of the reference material program for a fifth 3-year period of support, deep ocean water containing ca. 40 umol C/kg of biologically refractory dissolved organic carbon and low carbon reference water will continue to be distributed to the marine biogeochemistry community. Broader Impacts: With continuation of this work the US and international communities will confidently produce consistent measurements of a major marine carbon reservoir, thereby advancing society's ability to assess changes in the marine carbon cycle and the role of the ocean in climate change. The principal investigator maintains a website that provides direct and convenient links to a growing number of DOM data collected from the global ocean (http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/biogeochem/Data.html). As the CRM program has matured, a growing number of international laboratories are now able to provide high quality data to this repository. The principal investigator intends to pursue those data over the next 3 years, making them publicly available to the carbon community.