Our colleagues from the Columbia group, including Amanda Fay, Thea Heimdal and Galen McKinley, have recently had a Geophysical Research Letter published with AGU.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL117961
They studied how new ocean carbon data affects estimates of how much carbon dioxide (CO2) the ocean takes up from the atmosphere. Each year, a large public data set called SOCAT is updated with new measurements. They compared two versions of this data set—SOCATv2023 and SOCATv2024—using two common methods to estimate CO2 levels in the ocean. For results prior to 2018, both versions gave very similar results. But starting in 2018, they found noticeable differences; the newer SOCATv2024 data suggests the ocean has taken up less CO2 than we previously thought. Most of this change comes from the Southern Ocean. Although the new data are relatively few, they had a big impact on the results because the Southern Ocean is not well-sampled.
Their analysis shows that even a small number of new measurements in these poorly observed areas can significantly change our understanding of the global carbon cycle. This work highlights how important it is to take carbon measurements in all parts of the ocean, especially the Southern Ocean, to get more accurate estimates of how much CO2 the ocean is absorbing.