GreenSeas was an EU FP7 programme funded to advance the quantitative knowledge of how planktonic marine ecosystems, including phytoplankton, bacterioplankton and zooplankton, will respond to environmental and climate changes. To achieve this GreenSeas employed a combination of observation data, numerical simulations and a cross-disciplinary synthesis to develop a high quality, harmonized and standardized plankton and plankton ecology long time-series, data inventory and information service. This contribution to the programme developed a number of indices to characterize quantitatively the seasonality of phytoplankton (Platt and Sathyendranath, 2008, Racault et al., 2014a). Specifically, indices that relate to the study of timing of periodic biological events as influenced by the environment are referred to as phytoplankton phenology. These indices include: timings of initiation, peak, and termination as well as the duration of the phytoplankton growing period. Changes in phytoplankton phenology (triggered by variations in climate) can profoundly alter: (1) the efficiency of the biological pump, with inevitable impact of the global carbon cycle; and (2) the interactions across trophic levels, which can engender trophic mismatch with major impacts on the survival of commercially important fish and crustacean larvae. Phenology indices were estimated using the R2010.0 reprocessing of Level 3 Mapped chlorophyll-a concentration from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view (SeaWiFS) sensor. The chlorophyll-a data were retrieved from NASA Ocean Color Web http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov for the period 1997-2008 at 9 km spatial resolution and 8-day temporal resolution. Linear interpolation was applied to map the chlorophyll-a concentration onto a 1degreex1degree fixed grid. The phenology indices were estimated following the method described in Racault et al. (2012). Missing chlorophyll-a data were reduced from the time-series prior to estimating the timing of ecological events. Missing values were filled by interpolating spatially adjacent values (average of 3 × 3 pixels on the 9km grid), when these were available. Any remaining missing values were filled by interpolating temporally adjacent values (average of previous and following 8-day composites), when these were available. Otherwise the value was not filled. A 3-week running mean was applied to remove small peaks in chlorophyll-a. The timings of initiation and end of the phytoplankton growing period were detected as the weeks when the chlorophyll concentration in a particular year rose above the long-term median value plus 5% and later fell below this same threshold (Racault et al., 2012). The duration of the growing season is defined as the number of weeks between initiation and end.

As part of the the CHIMNEY project (NERC grant NE/N016130/1), multibeam bathymetry data were collected during RRS James Cook cruise JC152 to a subsea chimney structure in the northern North Sea around Scanner Pockmark in August-September 2017. Multibeam data were acquired using a Kongsberg EM-710 multibeam echosounder and processed by the JC152 Science Party. In conjunction with seismic profile data acquired on the same cruise, these data will help scientists understand the surface and internal structure and origin of the chimney structure. This will facilitate estimation of the permeability of the chimney and its surroundings, and enable leakage pathways to be determined. The potential for past oil and gas reservoirs and saline aquifers to be used as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) reservoirs of atmospheric CO2 can subsequently be explored. The safety of storing CO2 in such reservoirs is dependent on fully exploring the risks of any leakage via such chimney structures, which the CHIMNEY project will investigate. CHIMNEY is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and involves scientists from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the University of Edinburgh. Investigators will work closely with project partners GEOMAR, Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, CGG and Applied Acoustics. The project is complementary to the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project: Strategies for Environmental Monitoring of Marine Carbon Capture and Storage (STEMM-CCS).

The data set comprises time series measurements from offshore pressure gauges mounted on the sea floor. The data holdings are approximately 100 observation months from 30 sites. The data are mainly from trans-ocean sections in the North Atlantic. Data records contain date/time, total pressure (or relative pressure) and, occasionally, temperature. The sampling interval is typically 15 minutes or hourly, over deployment periods ranging from 1 to 6 months. Data were collected mainly by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL), now the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) at Liverpool, and are managed by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).

A collection of raw water temperature-depth-time profiles were recorded from a selection of dive computers, underwater cameras and baseline Castaway microCTD devices. Data were collected at Oban recompression chamber (owned and managed by Tritonia Scientific), as well as during sea dives local to 56.42 N, 5.47W, over a two-week period between 08/01/2020 and 07/02/2020. A number of different devices and models were tested during the study. Chamber dives were undertaken to test and compare device response time (29 devices over 11 dives) and accuracy (6 replicate dives). This was followed by local sea dives to further compare device accuracy. During each pair of sea dives (6 total), half of the devices were mounted on a frame with the remainder worn by two divers. For the subsequent dives in each pair, each device was switched to the alternate mounting position. Dive profiles were exported from individual dive computers into Subsurface open source software, then exported in ssrf (XML) format for each week of data collection. Profiles from all dive computers were combined for analysis. Castaway microCTDs and Paralenz Dive Camera+ profiles were exported as individual CSV files per dive. Data were collected as part of Celia Marlowe’s PhD project at the University of East Anglia, which aimed to assess the precision, accuracy and uncertainty in water temperature profiles collected from devices commonly carried by Scuba divers. The PhD project is part of the Next Generation Unmanned Systems Science (NEXUSS) Centre for Doctoral Training, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) (NE/N012070/1), and is additionally supported by Cefas Seedcorn (DP901D). The diving and chamber tests were supported through a NERC National Facility for Scientific Diving grant (NFSD/17/02).

Data from this project is a UK contribution to a US research cruise that aimed to examine the impact of wave breaking and bubble processes on air-sea gas exchange. Measurements were made of whitecap fraction, wave state, wave bubble statistics and bubble properties beneath breaking waves on the R/V Knorr KN213-3 cruise departing Nuuk, Greenland October 9, 2013 arriving at Woods Hole, USA on November 12, 2013. Instruments and platforms used included an 11 meter long free-floating spar buoy equipped with wave wires, a bubble camera, acoustic resonators, a Waverider buoy and ship measurements of aerosol fluxes. Data generation were funded by NERC parent grant NE/J020893/1 awarded to Professor Ian Brooks and associated child grants NE/J020540/1 and NE/J022373/2 awarded to Mr Robin Pascal and Dr Helen Czerski respectively.

The dataset comprises chlorophyll-a concentrations from water samples taken during RRS James Clark Ross cruise JR304, from 15/11/2014 - 17/12/2014. The cruise sailed from Punta Arenas, Chile, returning to Stanley, Falkland Islands. Samples were taken during transit to Signy Island (South Orkneys), and then up through the Scotia Sea to BAS survey sites P2 and P3 as well as near South Georgia and in the Western Core Box survey area to the north of the island of South Georgia. 112 samples were collected from the ship’s uncontaminated underway supply, with an intake at approximately 6 m depth, every two hours during transit periods. 103 samples were collected, using a rosette sampler, from the upper 1000m during CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth probe) deployments. Each 300ml sample was filtered through a 0.8μm pore size, 25mm diameter, MPF300 filter, rinsed with milliQ water, placed in an eppendorf tube and stored at -20°C for later analysis. Samples were extracted in 90 % acetone for 22-24 hours at 4°C and measured on a Trilogy Turner Designs 7200 lab fluorometer calibrated with a pure chlorophyll-a standard (Sigma, UK) and set up following the method of Welschmeyer (1994). Data have not been adjusted for blanks. The data set was from the annual Western Core Box Cruise run by British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Data were collected to support the PhD of Anna Belcher and provide seasonal context for the cruise in terms of the primary production in the surface ocean. Chlorophyll samples were taken by Jenny Thomas (BAS), Gabi Stowasser (BAS), Sophie Fielding(BAS), Vicky Peck (BAS), Jess Gardner (University of East Anglia and BAS), Cecilia Liszka (BAS), Manon Duret (National Oceanography Centre, NOC), Anna Belcher (NOC), Anna Mikis (Cardiff University) , Marianne Wootton (Sir Alistair Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science), Sebastien Floter (GEOMAR Kiel). Chlorophyll samples were analysed aboard the R.R.S. James Clark Ross by Manon Duret and Anna Belcher from NOC.

This dataset comprises measurements of microbial uptake activities of betaine and choline, particulate phase osmolytes, amplicon sequencing of marker genese involved in Nitrogenous-osmolyte catabolism, and single cell genome data. Water samples were collected from at the L4 station of the Western Channel Observatory between April 27, 2015 to April 24, 2017 using Niskin bottles attached to a rosette sampler deployed from the RV Plymouth Quest. Nitrogenous osmolytes (glycine betaine, choline and trimethylamine N-oxide are essential components for most organisms in the marine environment. They enable cells to exist in a salty environment, but also have several other proposed uses. The aim of the project is to understand the seasonal cycle of glycine betaine, trimethylamine N-oxide and choline at Station L4. The water samples were analysed for the microbial assimilation and dissimilation activities using 14C labelled betaine and choline, respectively. The data will be incorporated to the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM) coupled with the hydrodynamic model General Ocean Turbulent Model (GOTM) to simulate the N-osmolyte cycling at the L4 station. The data were collected under the project Biogeochemical cycling of N-osmolytes in the surface ocean funded by NERC Discovery Science grants NE/M002233/1 (parent), NE/M003361/1 (child), NE/M002934/1 (child). The grants were led by Dr Yin Chen, Dr Ruth Airs, and Dr Wei Huang respectively.

The data set comprises time series of sea level data from coastal tide gauges. The data holdings include over 1000 site years of data from about 200 sites comprising about 10 million records. About 75 per cent of the data are from some 100 sites around the British Isles - the remaining data are from coastal sites and islands scattered across the globe. Data are primarily hourly values. Recording periods vary from one month at some sites to over several years.There are three short series from around the Irish coast which were collected in 1842.

This dataset contains high and low water values manually digitised from historic hand-written tabulated ledgers, from the Port of London Authority (PLA). The dataset contains 463 years of data, from across 15 tide gauge sites along the Thames Estuary (bounding box = -0.3159W, 51.3914N, 1.3797E, 51.8428N), for the period 1911 to 1995. When these historic records are combined with digital records available from the PLA since 1995, the new sea level time-series spans the 109-year period from 1911 to 2019. London is one of the world’s most important coastal cities and is located around the Thames Estuary. Quantifying changes in sea levels in the Thames Estuary over the 20th century and early part of the 21st century is vital to inform future management of flood risk in London. This dataset is of importance for ongoing monitoring of mean sea-level rise, and changes in tidal range and extreme sea levels in the Thames Estuary. The project was led by the Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton and the Environment Agency, with contributions from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemunde and the National Oceanography Centre. The study contributes to the objectives of UK National Environment Research Council (NERC) project E-Rise: Earliest detection of sea-level rise accelerations to inform lead time to upgrade/replace coastal flood defence infrastructure (NE/P009069/1; I.D.H.).

This dataset includes two cruises of data collected to investigate Arctic hydrate dissociation as a consequence of climate change and to determine vulnerable methane reservoir and gas escape mechanisms. Work during both JR269A and JR269B was focused on two separate geographical areas. The first of these was west of Prins Karls Forland, in water depths of between 150 and 1200 m. At its landward end, this survey area crosses a region at water depths up to 400 m where a dense concentration of methane escape bubble plumes occur. The second survey area straddles the summit of the Vestnesa Ridge, in water depths of 1180 to 1400 m, and is also the site of methane escape bubble plumes within the water column and of fluid escape chimneys and pockmarks previously imaged at and beneath the sea bed. This area lies approximately 100 km west of the mouth of Kongsfjorden. Data collection took place between August 2011 and July 2012. The research expedition used a deep-towed, very high resolution seismic system to image the small-scale structures that convey gas to the seabed and to detect the presence of gas in the sediments. This was done in conjunction with an electromagnetic exploration system that uses a deep-towed transmitter and receivers on the seabed to derive the variations in electrical resistivity in the sediments beneath the seabed. The observations carried out on the two cruises included; underway, meteorological observations and echo sounder data, multichannel seismic reflection profiling data, wide angle seismic survey data, and ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) data, ocean bottom electro-magnetometer data and controlled source electromagnetic surveys (CSEM). The overall objectives of the project were to determine the spatial distribution of gas and hydrate accumulations beneath the sea bed; to investigate and understand gas transport and escape mechanisms, their spatial distribution, and the controls on these; and to quantify gas and hydrate saturation values in situ within the pore spaces of the shallow sediment reservoirs. The research is focused on specific areas where significant accumulations of methane hydrate and active methane venting through the sea floor were observed and documented during the earlier JR211 cruise in 2008. This is a NERC funded project hosted by University of Southampton. The data held at BODC include multichannel seismic reflection, TOPAS sub-bottom profiler and 2D seismic reflection data in SEG-Y format. No further data are expected.