First Annual Report on the SNOMS Project

In 2006 the Swire Group Charitable Trust funded the development and installation of a system to measure the partial pressure of carbon dioxide dissolved in the surface ocean from one of the Swire Group’s ships. The system was fitted on the MV Pacific Celebes in June 2007. The Celebes trades on a global route out of Singapore. It takes about 5 months to go round the world. Measurements are made of the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in seawater and air, also of water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and nitrogen, air temperature, pressure and humidity. Data are collected automatically on the ship and then transmitted to shore where they are transferred to a public web page. The data are vital to enabling the prediction of change in the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide and hence the rate of climate change induced by anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide. Key observations to date are: (1) potentially high inputs of gasses into the ocean during sustained storm conditions, (2) a substantial natural flux of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere of the western equatorial Pacific under the ‘La Nina’ conditions of 2007, (3) the potential of the western North Atlantic to absorb more carbon dioxide in autumn than previously predicted.