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The CARBO-ACID research cruise (EUROFLEETS+ SEA02_10) was carried out on the RV Ramón Margalef between August 2nd and August 11st, with departing from Vigo – Spain and ending in Lisbon – Portugal. The main objective of this cruise was to collect data and samples to study the potential effects of ocean acidification on carbonate marine organisms (coccolithophores, pteropods, planktonic and benthic foraminifera, and corals) along the Iberian margin. With this objective, oceanographic data and water samples, plankton, cold-water corals and sediment samples were collected during an upwelling season, along two transects coinciding with the two persistent upwelling filaments off the Iberia Margin: the Cape Finisterra and the Cape Roca. In this dataset is guiven all the acquired data recollected onboad. During the CARBO-ACID cruise we did a total of 7 stations, 4 stations along the Cape Finisterra transect (from W to E: CA3, CA2, CA7, CA8) and 3 stations at the Cape Roca (from W to E: CA6, CA5, CA4) transect (Fig). At each station we usually started with a multibeam survey, a CTD and Rosette cast. These initial operations allowed to identify the different water masses present in this area, characterize their physical properties and to recover seawater samples at specific depth levels. The seawater samples were onboard subsampled, preserved in cold conditions or with chemicals and/ or filtered for several further analysis in the shore-based laboratories: DNA, chlorophyll, fitoplankton, coccolithophores, pH, alkalinity, stable isotopic composition, trace elements concentration and Suspend Particulate Matter. Subsequently to these operations, at each station, two vertical tows with a plankton multinet (with 5 nets) were done on the top 700 m of the water column to sample the planktonic communities of the different water depths. After this, sediment samples were recovered with a box-corer to study the past oceanographic conditions, between the pre-industrial Era and the Present, with multi-proxies used in paleoceanography and sedimentology. A total of 10 box-cores were recollected and each of them was onboard sub-sampled for eDNA, enzymes and benthic foraminifera. Fifteen shipek grab samples were recollected at the Fontanelas seamount (Estremadura Spur), station CA6, to characterize the sedimentary cover and to evaluate the presence of deep cold-water corals. Preliminary results show that the stations CA7, CA8 and CA4, located close to the coast, as expected, are the most influenced by the coastal upwelling, exhibiting colder surface water, higher values of fluorescence, and more zooplankton content reflecting higher phyto-zooplankton concentrations, as typical of the upwelling waters. At station CA4 temperature was higher and fluorescence showed lower values, indicative of less phytoplankton, and interpreted as indicating a different upwelling source water from that upwelled further north. Based on the CTD data, the Cape Roca transect is more influenced by the subtropical East North Atlantic Central Water (ENACWst), while the Cape Finisterra transect is more under the influence of the subpolar branch (ENACWsp). Seafloor sediment samples showed significant differences between the stations. Along the northern transect (Cape Finisterra) the seafloor sediments show an increase in grain size from the offshore to the coast. The offshore stations CA3 and CA2 revealed finer grained sediments, CA8 were composed of coarser sand and the station CA7, the shallowest station 77 m, presented the sediment composed mainly of shell fragments and coarse grain sand. Along the southern transect (Cape Roca), the offshore station CA6 (Fontanelas seamount) has coarser sandy sediments with rock clasts and cold-water coral fragments, and the stations CA5 and CA4 with fine sand to muddy sediments. The detailed CA6 bathymetry allowed to verify the existence of small plateaus on the slope of the Fontanelas seamount, where the fossil cold-water corals fragments were found, suggesting that this area is a very interesting system deserving further study with a ROV, and to characterize the corals fields and verify if there are live corals. These recollected data and samples will allow not only to reconstruct the pH variability under different environmental conditions, but also to estimate the biogeochemical changes along the coastal ocean waters as the anthropogenic influence increases. These results will contribute to better understand and model the effects on the biota under the future expected oceans pH changes.

Vegetation surveys were carried out in four different study areas in the Sakha Republic, Russia: in the mountainous region of the Verkhoyansk Range within the Oymyakonsky and Tomponsky District (Event EN21-201 - EN21-219), and in three lowland regions of Central Yakutia within the Churapchinsky, Tattinsky and the Megino-Kangalassky District (Event EN21220 - EN21264). The study area is located within the boreal forest biome that is underlain by permafrost soils. The aim was to record the projective ground vegetation in different boreal forest types studied during the RU-Land_2021_Yakutia summer field campaign in August and September 2021.Ground vegetation was surveyed for different vegetation types within a circular forest plot of 15m radius. Depending on the heterogeneity of the forest plot, multiple vegetation types (VA, VB, or VC) were chosen for the survey. The assignment of a vegetation type is always unique to a site. Their cover on the circular forest plot was recorded in percent.In total, 84 vegetation types at 58 forest plots were assessed. All data were collected by scientists form the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) Germany, the University of Potsdam Germany, and the North-Easter Federal University of Yakutsk (NEFU) Russia.

Species distribution models (SDMs) are becoming an important tool for marine conservation and management. Yet while there is an increasing diversity and volume of marine biodiversity data for training SDMs, little practical guidance is available on how to leverage distinct data types to build robust models. We explored the effect of different data types on the fit, performance and predictive ability of SDMs by comparing models trained with four data types for a heavily exploited pelagic fish, the blue shark (Prionace glauca), in the Northwest Atlantic: two fishery-dependent (conventional mark-recapture tags, fisheries observer records) and two fishery-independent (satellite-linked electronic tags, pop-up archival tags). We found that all four data types can result in robust models, but differences among spatial predictions highlighted the need to consider ecological realism in model selection and interpretation regardless of data type. Differences among models were primarily attributed to biases in how each data type, and the associated representation of absences, sampled the environment and summarized the resulting species distributions. Outputs from model ensembles and a model trained on all pooled data both proved effective for combining inferences across data types and provided more ecologically realistic predictions than individual models. Our results provide valuable guidance for practitioners developing SDMs. With increasing access to diverse data sources, future work should further develop truly integrative modeling approaches that can explicitly leverage strengths of individual data types while statistically accounting for limitations, such as sampling biases.  Please see the README document ("README.md") and the accompanying published article: Braun, C. D., M. C. Arostegui, N. Farchadi, M. Alexander, P. Afonso, A. Allyn, S. J. Bograd, S. Brodie, D. P. Crear, E. F. Culhane, T. H. Curtis, E. L. Hazen, A. Kerney, N. Lezama-Ochoa, K. E. Mills, D. Pugh, N. Queiroz, J. D. Scott, G. B. Skomal, D. W. Sims, S. R. Thorrold, H. Welch, R. Young-Morse, R. Lewison. In press. Building use-inspired species distribution models: using multiple data types to examine and improve model performance. Ecological Applications. Accepted. DOI: < article DOI will be added when it is assigned >

Whether marine fish will grow differently in future high pCO2 environments remains surprisingly uncertain. Long-term and whole-life cycle effects are particularly unknown, because such experiments are logistically challenging, space demanding, exclude long-lived species, and require controlled, restricted feeding regimes—otherwise increased consumption could mask potential growth effects. Here, we report on repeated, long-term, food-controlled experiments to rear large populations (>4,000 individuals total) of the experimental model and ecologically important forage fish Menidia menidia (Atlantic silverside) under contrasting temperature (17°, 24°, and 28°C) and pCO2 conditions (450 vs. 2,200 μatm) from fertilization to a third of this annual species' life span. Quantile analyses of trait distributions showed mostly negative effects of high pCO2 on long-term growth. At 17°C and 28°C, but not at 24°C, high pCO2 fish were significantly shorter [17°C: -5 to -9%; 28°C: -3%] and weighed less [17°C: -6 to -18%; 28°C: -8%] compared to ambient pCO2 fish. Reductions in fish weight were smaller than in length, which is why high pCO2 fish at 17°C consistently exhibited a higher Fulton's k (weight/length ratio). Notably, it took more than 100 days of rearing for statistically significant length differences to emerge between treatment populations, showing that cumulative, long-term CO2 effects could exist elsewhere but are easily missed by short experiments. Long-term rearing had another benefit: it allowed sexing the surviving fish, thereby enabling rare sex-specific analyses of trait distributions under contrasting CO2 environments. We found that female silversides grew faster than males, but there was no interaction between CO2 and sex, indicating that males and females were similarly affected by high pCO2. Because Atlantic silversides are known to exhibit temperature-dependent sex determination, we also analyzed sex ratios, revealing no evidence for CO2-dependent sex determination in this species. In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2020) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2020-12-25.

Abstract: The Northern Gannet Morus bossanus is an avian sentinel; the largest breeding seabird in Ireland and an obligate piscivore. Gannet eggs were collected from two island colonies off the east coast of Ireland, approximately 150km from each other, in locations with divergent history of industrialization (n = 10-20). Levels of potentially harmful contaminants including Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), Organochlorine pesticides (OCs), heavy metals and mercury were measured and differences of contaminant concentrations between different colonies compared. This is the first such study of contaminant levels in Gannet, or in any seabird egg in Ireland. Stable isotopes of carbon (d13C) and nitrogen (d15N) were measured in each egg to understand the influence of diet in contaminant levels detected. Significantly higher levels of PCBs, PBDEs and mercury were detected near Dublin (Ireland's industrialized capital city and location of its largest port) compared to Wexford. No differences were observed in levels of OCs and heavy metals between the two colonies. Stable isotope analysis demonstrated that Gannets in both locations occupy the same dietary niche excluding a difference in diet as the driver of differing contaminant levels in the two feeding areas. Though Gannets travel significant distances when foraging for food (~200km) tracking studies have shown that Gannets colonies maintain exclusive feeding areas with little overlap between neighbouring colonies. Differences between colonies within the feeding range of Gannets can therefore be detected despite Gannet's high dispersal ability. These results are in concurrence with elevated levels of contaminants in lower trophic level organisms that have been found in Dublin Bay compared to the rest of Ireland, indicating potential for Gannets as a higher trophic level indicator - though variability in their diet, including feeding on fishing discard, may lead to unacceptable levels of variability for an indicator species. Authors: Andrew Power��, Philip White��, Brendan McHugh��, Sinead Murphy��, Simon Berrow��, Moira Schlingermann��, Stephen Newton��, Linda O'Hea��, Brian Boyle��, Marissa Tannian��, Denis Crowley��, Evin McGovern��, Ian O'Connor�� ��Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, ��Marine Institute, ��BirdWatch Ireland

Total oxygen uptake rates were assessed by conducting sediment core incubations. After MUC retrieval and sediment core preparation on deck, three cores were taken to a dark, temperature controlled laboratory on board Polarstern that was refrigerated to 2 °C-4 °C. Incubation procedure generally followed the approach described by Link et al. (2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-10-5911-2013).

Ambient conditions shape microbiome responses to both short- and long-duration environment changes through processes including physiological acclimation, compositional shifts, and evolution. Thus, we predict that microbial communities inhabiting locations with larger diel, episodic, and annual variability in temperature and pH should be less sensitive to shifts in these climate-change factors. To test this hypothesis, we compared responses of surface ocean microbes from more variable (nearshore) and more constant (offshore) sites to short-term factorial warming (+3 °C) and/or acidification (pH -0.3). In all cases, warming alone significantly altered microbial community composition, while acidification had a minor influence. Compared with nearshore microbes, warmed offshore microbiomes exhibited larger changes in community composition, phylotype abundances, respiration rates, and metatranscriptomes, suggesting increased sensitivity of microbes from the less-variable environment. Moreover, while warming increased respiration rates, offshore metatranscriptomes yielded evidence of thermal stress responses in protein synthesis, heat shock proteins, and regulation. Future oceans with warmer waters may enhance overall metabolic and biogeochemical rates, but they will host altered microbial communities, especially in relatively thermally stable regions of the oceans. In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2019) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2020-10-20.

Project: GCOS Earth Heat Inventory - A study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory (EHI), and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period from 1960 to present. Summary: The file “GCOS_EHI_1960-2020_Earth_Heat_Inventory_Ocean_Heat_Content_data.nc” contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat inventory over the period 1960-2020. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory published in von Schuckmann et al. (2020), and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2020. The dataset also contains estimates for global ocean heat content over 1960-2020 for different depth layers, i.e., 0-300m, 0-700m, 700-2000m, 0-2000m, 2000-bottom, which are described in von Schuckmann et al. (2022). This version includes an update of heat storage of global ocean heat content, where one additional product (Li et al., 2022) had been included to the initial estimate. The Earth heat inventory had been updated accordingly, considering also the update for continental heat content (Cuesta-Valero et al., 2023).