The four-year Horizon Europe TRICUSO seeks to enhance every level of the Southern Ocean carbon observation value chain from innovating sensor technologies and expanding observation capacities via autonomous and citizen science platforms, to data products and system governance in support of the WMO Global Greenhouse Gas Watch (G3W).
VOLUME THREE STORIES
Dear Readers,
Since the last newsletter, our colleagues around the globe have taken well-deserved summer breaks (winter break for our partner SAERI) – but also put in a lot of work to strengthen connections with the larger international research community around ocean carbon and the Southern Ocean. As you can read in our Scoops of the Season, TRICUSO organised and participated in a number of workshops and meetings with SOCAT, SOCONET, SCAR, Polar Argo and others.
TRICUSO researchers were also busy accomplishing quite a few milestones in observing network design (M27, M9) and innovations around measurements (M7) and methodology (M11). I personally have taken a deep dive into the data from one of our ships of opportunity, the Hans Hansson. A few interesting stories are emerging from just this one dataset, which is revealing the impacts of a marine heatwave and volcanic activity on CO2 in the West Antarctic Peninsula. Keep reading below for more details on the stories the Southern Ocean is telling us!
Best,
Lucie Knor
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research
WP6 Co-Lead: Role of RIs in the G3W and the Wider GOOS Landscape
A Season of Success Stories and Milestones
TRICUSO kicked-off the summer with the delivery of several key reports describing the achievement of milestones across the project’s technology, governance, observation, data management and data mapping pillars.
MILESTONE 7: Lab-on-chip TADIC Sensor: Ready for Float Integration. Partner NOC’s lab-on-chip technology miniaturises analytical laboratory methods into compact autonomous sensors. For this milestone, the focus has been on the TADIC sensor, which combines two carbonate-system measurements within a single autonomous lab-on-chip platform.
MILESTONE 9: Diagnosis of Optimal Sailing Yacht and Cruise Ship Sailboat Equipment Fitting Strategy. To improve the accuracy of the ocean carbon sink estimates, racing yachts and fishing vessels are being equipped with underway sensors able to provide much-needed CO2 measurements. Milestone 9 describes the diagnosis of an optimal sailing yacht equipment fitting strategy and the studies it is based on.
MILESTONE 11: Methodology to Define pCO2 Fields from Multiple Research Infrastructures. For the first time, a new approach to characterise surface ocean pCO2 variability using observations from multiple Research Infrastructures, which disentangles the anthropogenic and circulation-driven contributions to observed pCO2 changes, has been successfully validated at reference ocean time-series stations and extended to the Southern Ocean.
MILESTONE 27: Mapping the Global Fleet: Identifying SOCAT Platforms as the Foundation of SOCONET. The 2026 release of the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) marks a landmark moment for ocean carbon science and for the TRICUSO project. With 44 million quality-controlled measurements now publicly available, SOCAT v2026 offers an unprecedented window into the health of the ocean carbon sink.
First European Contribution to Bio-GO-SHIP
Sophie Clayton (NOC) spent some time this summer at sea on the R/V Celtic Explorer, among 19 scientists representing 15 different nations. The three week cruise saw two teams alternating 12-hour shifts enabling work around the clock, focussed on various missions. In addition to delivering the first European contribution to Bio-Go-SHIP, the cruise had another distinction of having sent the first ever notification to the BBNJ for the collection of samples for marine genetic resources.
It is all good news for Bio-GO-SHIP, which also recently received an endorsement from the UN Ocean Decade.
Strengthening the Ocean Observation Value Chain
Two international workshops were held this past June in Ostend, Belgium, co-funded by TRICUSO along with consortium partners VLIZ and ICOS, and NOAA.
SOCAT governance: exploring links with SOCONET and SOCOM
This workshop brought the joint communities of SOCONET, SOCAT and SOCOM to explore links between each other and outline their future collaboration. The event also featured the launch of the European SOCAT.info hub.
Ocean Carbon Observing Design Workshop
This two day event focussed on the design and development of an optimal surface ocean pCO2 network in support of the WMO G3W and the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) Carbon Plan and was organised by Maciej Telszewski (IO PAN) via the IOCCP.
European Ocean Carbon Summit
The European Ocean Carbon Summit is a campaign driven by a coalition of Horizon Europe projects (including TRICUSO) focussed on investigating ocean carbon to jointly create a report describing the aims and achievements of this EU investment portfolio with recommendations for future funding actions. The report will be presented at an interactive event in Brussels on the 26th of May 2027, with open registration.
GLODAPv3
Congratulations to consortium members Siv Lauvset (NORCE), Toste Tanhua (GEOMAR), and Peter Brown (NOC), for the delivery of GLODAPv3. Providing data from 1181 cruises, spanning more than 50 years of observations (1972 – 2023), this new version includes all data from the previous GLODAPv2.2023, together with an additional 57 new cruises. All data have been evaluated for systematic differences and adjusted appropriately.
Research Infrastructures for Climate Change Report
TRICUSO is pleased to be among the 38 projects (including sister projects GEORGE and EuroGO-SHIP) which were analysed in a recent European Research Executive Agencies report investigating climate resilience projects to identify existing EU capacities, challenges and needs to better respond to climate change.
ICOS Science Conference
The biennial event brings together top scientists and decision-makers from around the world to discuss greenhouse gases and biogeochemical cycles. TRICUSO colleagues will present project work at numerous orals and poster talks in Lund, Sweden 15-17 September.
A New SOOP Line in the Southern Ocean Update
As an update to the story we featured in the last issue of Currents, all the beats that it took to achieve this important new SOOP line on the MV Pharos are available to read in an engaging story by Tobias Steinhoff and Melf Paulsen (GEOMAR). This installation of a semi-permanent observing system in the Southern Ocean will open up a fuller understanding of the role of the ocean in regulating global climate.
Polar Argo Workshop
Clara Douglas (Euro-Argo ERIC) gave a talk, titled “Multi-Method Autonomous Assessment of Export Production in the Open Ocean Region of the Weddell Gyre” and discussed, in the break-out sessions, TRICUSO activities related to creating synergies between Polar Argo and other observing systems as well as the modelling community.
12th SCAR Open Conference
Toste Tanhua, Lucie Knor (GEOMAR) and Richard Sanders (NORCE) represented TRICUSO at SCAR26 presenting results from the project’s network design and citizen science efforts and participated in discussions to strengthen TRICUSO’s ties with the Antarctic and Southern Ocean international research community, exploring how the project can connect further with ambitious programs and projects such as the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS), Antarctica InSync and preparations for the 5th International Polar Year. Richard also discussed the need to increase the intensity of the current observing programme to increase the accuracy of observation-based estimates of the ocean uptake, through targeted observations in the Southern Ocean. He told the audience that, “Improving estimates beyond requires a new series of carefully targeted OSSEs which need to be commissioned now so that the results can be evaluated for implementation in five years time”.
With 1,400 Antarctic scientists of all disciplines present through the week-long event, SCAR26 offered the right stage for these important conversations.
The Ocean Race Atlantic
New York, US - Lorient, France │ 1-9 September 2026
ICOS Science Conference 2026
Lund, Sweden │ 15-17 September 2026
The Ocean Race 2027
The Ocean Race 2027 will start from its home port of Alicante, Spain, on 17 January 2027. One racing yacht will be equipped with the Race Pack for TRICUSO. Stay tuned to learn who.
European Ocean Carbon Summit
Brussels, Belgium │ 26 May 2027
Thank you for reading TRICUSO Currents. The next volume will be out in November.
