Carbon To Sea, in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Submarine Scientific, and almost 100 leading ocean researchers, has published a new protocol for data management in Ocean Acidification Enhancement (OAE).
This milestone advancement sets a building foundation for entities active in OAE carbon removal, enabling them to collect information in a standardized way and to compare and share results that build trust around this novel decarbonization approach.
Until now, the valuable field data gathered by OAE researchers had been collected in different formats that made cross-comparison difficult.
The OAE data management protocol addresses this issue by providing guidelines on producing consistent OAE research data and metadata and building a knowledge base that can point to the possibilities, limitations, and safety components of this technology.
To that end, the protocol covers a wide range of OAE data generation aspects, including data from sensors, carbonate chemistry measurements, model code and outputs, sediment data, and social science data.
This tool was specifically designed to serve as an asset to data producers like researchers, nonprofits, and private developers, as well as funders and granting agencies, who require consistent data for accountability.
Furthermore, the protocol matches the needs of registries and verifiers, who require transparent documentation for auditing projects, as well as regulators, who need reliable data on the quality and comparability of OAE results.
The protocol development process included various draft versions that underwent contributor consultations, taking into account a range of perspectives and expertise. This refinement period included rounds of public reviews, workshops, and knowledge-sharing meetings.
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Keeping in line with the idea of standardization, sections from the protocol stem from existing standards developed by NOAA’s Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (OCADS) for general oceanographic metadata, controlled vocabularies, and data standards for different oceanographic observation types.
In the future, the Ocean Acidification Enhancement data management protocol will go through annual reviews to ensure it stays up to date with the latest scientific findings, and it will be shaped in alignment with stakeholder feedback to maintain its relevance.
