September 2025 | Oceanography
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GOA-ON GOAL 3: DATA AND KNOWLEDGE
EXCHANGE TO OPTIMIZE MODELING
GOA-ON’s third goal emphasizes the importance of data sharing
and collaboration to improve modeling efforts. The network facil-
itates the exchange of knowledge between observational, exper-
imental, and modeling scientists, as well as their access to data,
to enable the development of more accurate and comprehensive
models that can both hindcast and project the future trajectory of
OA, and to investigate its effects on marine ecosystems.
GOAL 3 LESSONS LEARNED RELEVANT
TO mCDR AND CURRENT STATUS OF
PRODUCTS AND MODELING EFFORTS
The collective OA knowledge gained through observing systems
and experimental studies encompasses critical and necessary pre-
liminary steps toward informing, improving, and validating mod-
els as well as toward developing products that can be used beyond
the scientific community. For instance, increased understand-
ing together with accumulation of data has allowed the develop-
ment of empirical relationships for estimating DIC and alkalinity
(e.g., Fassbender et al., 2017; Land et al., 2019; Carter et al., 2021),
and for creating climatologies of OA-relevant parameters across
the global ocean (e.g., J. Jiang et al., 2023). More recently, machine
learning and AI are aiding the development of new products that
can derive OA-relevant parameters from in situ and remote sens-
ing observations (e.g., Gregor et al., 2024). These products are
being made available in various forms (Box 2), including netCDF
(e.g., Gregor and Gruber, 2021), static maps (e.g., L.Q. Jiang et al.,
2022), visualization platforms (e.g., the OceanDataLab acidifica-
tion platform), and the #OceanAcidificationStripes website.
In addition to these data products, available numerical models
that complement observation-based expertise can track biological
and biogeochemical interactions and predict a range of potential
OA trajectories (Boyd et al., 2023). The GOA-ON community has
critically invested in these developments, including by publish-
ing best practices for parameterizing marine carbonate chemistry
(Orr et al., 2018; Carter et al., 2021). Both global (including Earth
system, e.g., Palmiéri and Yool, 2024) and regional (e.g., Artioli
et al., 2014, 2012) implementations demonstrate reasonable skill
and deliver predictive capabilities. These models are widely used
to assess impacts of OA on both scientific and policy levels, for
example, in reports for the IPCC (IPCC, 2021), such national
and regional bodies as OSPAR1 (McGovern et al., 2023), or the
UK Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (Findlay et al.,
2025). However, numerical models are limited by their parame-
terization and vary in sophistication due to necessarily simpli-
fied marine biogeochemistry and ecosystem descriptions (Fennel
BOX 2. mCDR-RELEVANT OCEAN
ACIDIFICATION RESOURCES
• Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON)
(see also https://www.goa-on.org/news/news.php)
• Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT)
• Global Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP)
• International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP)
• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ocean Acidification
International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC)
• Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC-UNESCO)
• Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS)
• Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR)
• International Carbon Ocean Network for Early Career (ICONEC)
• GOA-ON data explorer
• NOAA Ocean Carbon Acidification Data System (OCADS)
• UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.3.1 data portal
• IOCCP hardware directory
• OA-ICC bibliographic database
• OA-ICC portal for OA biological response data
• SCOR Changing Ocean Biological Systems (COBS)
Working Group
• GOA-ON Biology Working Group
• GOA-ON mCDR Working Group
• Global Surface Ocean Acidification Indicators
(L.Q. Jiang et al., 2022)
• OceanSODA-ETHZ data product
(Gregor and Gruber, 2022)
• Ocean Data Lab (ODL) Ocean Health –
Ocean Acidification portal
• #OceanAcidificationStripes
• SCOR MarChemSpec Working Group
• GOA-ON Pier2Peer program
• GOA-ON in a Box kits
• Example GOA-ON and IAEA OA-ICC training event
• OceanTeacher Global Academy (OTGA) OA course
• Ocean Acidification Research for Sustainability (OARS)
Programme
(see also https://www.goa-on.org/oars/overview.php)
1 The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the
North-East Atlantic (the “OSPAR Convention”) was open for signature at
the Ministerial Meeting of the Oslo and Paris Commissions in Paris on
September 22, 1992. See https://www.ospar.org/convention.