🧩 Workshop Recap: Halifax Data Dive Sets New Groundwork for Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Standards
Jacki Long kicks off a day of workshop projects with attendees. Photo credit: Darren Calabrese for Carbon to Sea
On September 25, 2024, Submarine Scientific hosted a full-day Data Dive Workshop in Halifax, convening over 40 ocean scientists, modelers, data managers, and project developers to refine and test community-driven data standards for Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE). The workshop was held in partnership with the Carbon to Sea Initiative and took place alongside the OCEANS Halifax conference.
This hands-on, discussion-heavy event marked a major milestone in the development of an open, interoperable, and verification-ready OAE Data Standards Protocol—with a focus on advancing metadata practices, model data reproducibility, and long-term data accessibility.
Breakout working groups discuss recommendations and requirements for OAE field data standardization. Photo credit: Darren Calabrese for Carbon to Sea
🎯 Key Objectives:
Finalize a shared metadata template for OAE experiments
Identify minimum reporting standards for model and observational data
Test community alignment on naming conventions, intervention tracking, and baseline pairing
Evaluate pathways for submission to trusted data repositories
Begin drafting guidelines that will support third-party MRV and synthesis across trials
🔍 What We Explored:
🔹 Metadata & Discrete Data Standards
Participants reviewed metadata fields for describing interventions, feedstock types, regulatory context, and sampling regimes. A strong consensus emerged on the need for a standalone “intervention description file” linking all data products to a shared context.
🔹 Model Output Best Practices
Breakout groups compared standard climate documentation (e.g., CF & CMIP7) against OAE-specific needs. A top-voted feature? Reproducible model packages that include not just output, but full configurations, boundary conditions, and analysis workflows.
🔹 Future Scenario Planning
Participants envisioned what scalable, transparent mCDR data systems could look like by 2030. The winning “dream scenario”: cloud-based, clickable model environments enabling re-analysis and auditing from anywhere in the world.
🔹 Repository Readiness & Accessibility
Participants rated and compared leading Data Assembly Centers (DACs), discussed friction points in data submission, and explored metadata-driven interfaces that could make cross-project data mining easier. The group also surfaced key barriers—like team resourcing, ownership complexity, and data licensing—that delay submission timelines.
🧠 Insights That Will Shape the Protocol:
Top-priority metadata fields include dosing strategy, feedstock chemistry, and a time-based intervention flag (pre/during/post).
Model output standards should prioritize key carbon system variables (alkalinity, DIC, pH, CO₂ flux) and make both intervention and counterfactual simulations findable and comparable.
Shared vocabularies are critical for consistency—and need to support everything from field sensors to numerical grid specs.
Community trust depends not just on open data, but on clarity, usability, and transparent documentation.
🚀 What’s Next?
Findings from this workshop are being incorporated into the first full draft of the OAE Data Standards Protocol, set for public comment in early 2025. A follow-up session will take place at AGU 2024 to gather broader feedback and prepare the community for early adoption and field testing.
We’re deeply grateful to the workshop participants for their insight, candor, and energy—and to Carbon to Sea for supporting this foundational work to bring transparency and rigor to the marine carbon removal space.
Data Dive 2024 Workshop attendees in Halifax, Canada. Photo credit: Darren Calabrese for Carbon to Sea
