The Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP) Observatory is a sustained, multidisciplinary observatory. Key time-series datasets include measurements of sea temperature, air temperature, air pressure, waves, wind, CO2, salinity, Megafauna (Species diversity, abundance and biomass), geochemistry, humidity, chlorophyll, nitrate, PAR and currents. The PAP observatory is situated in the Northeast Atlantic away from the continental slope and mid Atlantic ridge (49N,16.5W, depth 4800m). Since 1989, this environmental study site in the Northeast Atlantic has become a major focus for international and interdisciplinary scientific research and monitoring including water column biogeochemistry, physics and benthic biology. Since 2002, a mooring has been in place with sensors taking a diverse set of biogeochemical and physical measurements of the upper 1000m of the water column. Some of these data are transmitted in near real-time via satellite. A diverse range of Essential Climate variables are measured and sampled at the PAP site from the atmosphere and surface ocean to the seafloor. The instruments used include CTD + Backscatter; ADCP (2 way, re-programmable for water profiling as well as burst sampling), Seismometer (2 way, retrieval of selected time period - 1 Minute - in the past e.g. seismic event), Bottom Pressure Sensor, Sediment trap (2 way, re-programmable for change sampling interval), Boxcores, Mega- and Multicores, Optode, Digital Camera and Stand-alone hydrophone. Seafloor sampling includes trawling, coring, towed camera systems from a research ship and time-lapse photography. Since 2002 many of the upper ocean measurements (0-1000m) have been transmitted in near real-time. There is a growing need for ever more accurate climatic models to predict future climate change and the impact this will have on human settlement, the insurance industry, fisheries, agriculture and nature at large. Long term observations at fixed points in the open oceans are essential to provide high quality and high resolution data to increase our knowledge of how our oceans function, how they are changing and how this may impact on the climate. The observatory is coordinated by the National Oceanography Centre. In 2010, a collaboration between NERC and UK Met Office has led to the first atmospheric measurements at the site.

The dataset comprises 5 hydrographic data profiles, collected by a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensor package, from across the North East Atlantic Ocean (limit 40W) area specifically along the south west coast of Western Sahara, during October of 2006. A complete list of all data parameters are described by the SeaDataNet Parameter Discovery Vocabulary (PDV) keywords assigned in this metadata record. The data were collected by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton as part of the Rapid Climate Change Programme.

The dataset comprises 50 hydrographic data profiles, collected by a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensor package, from across the North East Atlantic Ocean (limit 40W) area specifically around the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, during July and August 2007. A complete list of all data parameters are described by the SeaDataNet Parameter Discovery Vocabulary (PDV) keywords assigned in this metadata record. The data were collected by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton as part of the ECOsystems of the Mid Atlantic Ridge (ECOMAR) project.

The dataset comprises 117 hydrographic data profiles, collected by a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensor package, from across the South Atlantic Ocean area specifically a complete section from continent to continent from South America to Africa, during March and April of 2009. A complete list of all data parameters are described by the SeaDataNet Parameter Discovery Vocabulary (PDV) keywords assigned in this metadata record. The data were collected by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

The Rapid Climate Change (RAPID) data set comprises a diverse collection of oceanographic and benthic observations, including profiles of temperature, salinity, dissolved gases and currents. The dataset also includes discrete measurements of plankton, stable isotopes, dissolved metals, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nutrients in the water column, sediment grain size parameters and geochemistry, and atmospheric concentrations of inorganic halogens. The RAPID data were collected from numerous locations in the North Atlantic, North Sea, Greenland and Europe via over 30 cruises between 2004 and 2008. Many of the oceanographic data resulted from an extensive mooring array in the North Atlantic devoted to monitoring the Atlantic overturning circulation. These mooring arrays are continuing to return data in the follow-on programmes, Rapid Climate Change - Will the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation Halt? (RAPID-WATCH, 2008-2015) and RAPID - Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (RAPID-AMOC, 2015 onwards) which will result in a decadal time series spanning the North Atlantic. RAPID, RAPID-WATCH and RAPID-AMOC aim to investigate and understand the causes of rapid climate change, with a primary (but not exclusive) focus on the role of the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation. A Rapid Climate Change project office has been established at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. The cruise and mooring data are managed by the British Oceanographic Data Centre and are supplemented by atmospheric model output held at the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC).

This dataset consists of 20 CTD cast profiles from 20 stations in the Whittard Canyon and Haig Fras marine conservation zones, as part of the CodeMAP (Complex Deep-sea Environments: Mapping habitat heterogeneity As Proxy for biodiversity) project. These data were collected aboard the RRS James Cook cruise JC125 (Chief Scientist Veerle Huvenne), which departed and returned to Southampton from 09 August 2015 to 12 September 2015. The cruise was conducted to carry out habitat mapping work in the Whittard Canyon and Haig Fras to obtain a better insight in the biodiversity patterns, benthic habitat distributions and sediment transportation processes of submarine canyons. The CTD profile data collected supports data from marine geology, ecology, remote sensing and underwater vehicle technology to establish an integrated, statistically robust, and fully 3D methodology to map complex deep-sea habitats. Parameters measured from the CTD profiles include: pressure, depth, temperature, practical salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a fluorescence, transmittance, attenuance and turbidity. Data were collected using a ship deployed stainless steel CTD frame mounted with the following equipment: Sea-Bird 911plus CTD System, Digiquartz pressure sensor, Sea-Bird 3plus premium temperature sensor, Sea-Bird 4C conductivity sensor, Sea-Bird 43 dissolved oxygen sensor, WET Labs ECO BB(RT)D backscattering sensor, Chelsea Technologies Group Aquatracka III fluorometer, Chelsea Technologies Group Alphatracka II transmissometer (25 cm path length). The CTD data were received by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) having been binned into 2 m depth profiles for the downcast. The data have been processed and quality controlled using in-house BODC procedures and are available to download from the BODC website. Funding was provided by the European Research Council to CodeMAP (Grant No 258482).

This dataset consists of coccolithophore abundances in the North Atlantic that were collected from 37 CTD casts during three RRS Discovery cruises (D350, D351, D354) in the spring and summer of 2010. Water samples (0.2-1 L) were collected from CTD casts and filtered through cellulose nitrate (0.8 µm) and polycarbonate (0.45 µm or 0.8 µm) filters, rinsed with trace ammonium solution, oven dried (30-40 °C, 6-12 h) and stored in Millipore PetriSlides. The filters were examined using a Leo 1450VP scanning electron microscope, with coccolithophores identified following Young et al. (2003), and enumerated from 225 fields of view (Daniels et al., 2012). The detection limit was estimated to be 0.2-1.1 cells mL-1. The samples were collected to investigate coccolithophore community dynamics in the North Atlantic as part of the Irminger Basin Iron Study (IBIS)(D350, D354), Extended Ellett Line (EEL)(D351) and a NERC Fellowship. Samples were collected on D350 by Martine Couapel, on D351 by Stuart Painter and on D354 by Alex Poulton and Mike Lucas. In the lab, samples were prepared and processed by Chris Daniels, Elena Maher and Jonathan Hurst, and were analysed for coccolithophore abundances by Chris Daniels and Jeremy Mirza. The data are held at the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC). Daniels, C. J., Tyrrell, T., Poulton, A. J., and Pettit, L.: The influence of lithogenic material on particulate inorganic carbon measurements of coccolithophores in the Bay of Biscay, Limnol. Oceanogr., 57, 145-153, doi:10.4319/lo.2012.57.1.0145, 2012. Young, J. R., Geisen, M., Cros, L., Kleijne, A., Sprengel, C., Probert, I., and Ostergaard, J.: A guide to extant coccolithophore taxonomy, J. Nannoplankt. Res. Special Issue, 1, 1-132, 2003.

The dataset comprises the combination of estimates of anthropogenic carbon derived from hydrographic occupations of the 26N section with volume transports for the area between east USA and Africa calculated using the RAPID-MOCHA-WBTS AMOC timeseries. The data cover the time period between April 2004 and October 2012. The observations will be used with data from other sources to determine and interpret the accumulation of anthropogenic carbon in the North Atlantic, to infer the magnitude and variability of uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and assess the risk of changes in the meridional overturning circulation on the marine carbon cycle. The Atlantic Biogeochemical Fluxes programme (ABC-Fluxes) is a joint effort between NERC in the UK (Principal Investigator Elaine McDonagh), and NOAA in the USA (Molly Baringer). It builds on the work of the RAPID-MOCHA-WBTS programme, a joint effort between NERC in the UK (Principal Investigator Eleanor Frajka-Williams), NOAA (Molly Baringer) and RSMAS (Bill Johns) in the USA. The Atlantic anthropogenic carbon transport (and its components), calculated from the above data, are held by BODC in NetCDF format.

This dataset contains particle flux analyses and current measurements collected from sediment traps and associated moored current meter instrumentation. Four McLane sediment traps were deployed in the Iceland Basin (by the Ocean Weather Station India) in a mesoscale array around 60 degrees N 20 degrees W to sample particle flux time series between November 2006 - July 2007 and August 2007 - June 2008. Sediment traps were deployed with Aanderaa RCM8 current meters 15 m below the traps, recording current speed and direction once an hour. The sediment traps were initially deployed during RRS Discovery cruise D312 and recovered on RRS Discovery cruise D321. For the second deployment period the traps were deployed on RRS Discovery cruise D321 and recovered on RRS Discovery cruise D340. The first sediment traps were prepared for analysis by scientists shortly after recovery. The second deployment samples were stored in the dark at 4 degrees Celsius until 2016 and were subsequently analysed. All sediment trap samples are preserved with formalin and hence should not be affected by long time storage. The samples were analysed for mass flux, particulate organic carbon (POC) and nitrogen (PON) flux, calcium carbonate flux, biogenic silica flux (including dissolved contribution for deployment 2), strontium flux (including Acantharian cyst fractions for deployment 1 and 2 and particulate fractions for deployment 2). The samples from the latter part of deployment 2 are thought to have severely under collected and so those data are flagged. The dataset was produced for the purposes of calculating sediment fluxes in the Iceland Basin and was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) - Oceans 2025 Programme (Grant number NE/L002531/1).

The dataset comprises 10 hydrographic data profiles, collected by a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensor package, and 40 moored CTDs from across the North Atlantic Ocean area specifically the Subtropical North Atlantic, during May and June 2006. A complete list of all data parameters are described by the SeaDataNet Parameter Discovery Vocabulary (PDV) keywords assigned in this metadata record. The data were collected by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton as part of the Rapid Climate Change Programme.