Oceans and the Carbon Cycle: What Drives Air-Sea Exchange of CO2? Exploring Large Datasets from the Ocean Observing Initiative (OOI)

The oceans are considered a globally significant sink of carbon dioxide, but the magnitude and direction of flux across the air-sea interface vary regionally and temporally. Static graphs of geographic sources and sinks of CO₂ obscure the variability in air-sea flux and its cause, but large datasets are difficult for students to analyze and interpret without sufficient scaffolding. Recently available data from the Ocean Observing Initiative (OOI) provide opportunities to teach with large datasets to explore many aspects of marine science, including variation in air-sea gas exchange. Here, we describe the process of using Python notebooks to develop a graphically-rich interactive that supports student investigations on the variables that control carbon flux into and out of the oceans. In the interactive, students compare data collected from 2015 to 2018 by the coastal Endurance Array (Oregon coast, 46N 27W) and the coastal Pioneer Array (New England coast, 40N 70W) to investigate the impact of temperature, surface wind speed, surface salinity, and chlorophyll concentrations on variations in air-sea CO₂ flux. This interactive ‘widget’ and its associated documentation were designed during an OOI Data Labs Project workshop in July of 2019 with support of the OOI Data Lab Project facilitators. Further development of this interactive may include prediction of flux under novel conditions, the incorporation of data from lower and higher latitudes, and the influence of passing storms (such as the January 2018 bomb cyclone) on CO₂ flux. The data interactive is coupled with a flexible lesson plan that includes recommendations on effective use of this exploration in a range of educational settings, from advanced high school through graduate school.