Welcome
to the International Web Site of the
Joint Global Ocean Flux Study
Core Project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme

This web site was last updated by Bernard Avril on December 2003 when the JGOFS International Project Office (IPO) at the University of Bergen, Norway (http://www.uib.no/) closed, following the termination of the project the same year. For inquiries about the site, please contact the IGBP Secretariat (info@igbp.kva.se) or SCOR (secretariat@scor-int.org). The JGOFS-type research is continued through two new IGBP projects, IMBER and SOLAS, that will focus their research on the ocean carbon cycle. In this regard, they established the Joint IMBER/SOLAS Carbon Working Group. For more information, please visit the web sites of IMBER (http://www.imber.info/C_WG.html) or SOLAS (http://www.solas-int.org/)

    The Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) was an international and multi-disciplinary programme with participants from more than 20 nations. JGOFS was launched in 1987 at a planning meeting in Paris under the auspices of the Scientific Committee of Oceanic Research (SCOR), a committee of the International Council for Science (ICSU). Two years later, JGOFS became one of the first core projects of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). In the fall of 1988, long-term ocean time-series projects were established at sites near Bermuda and Hawaii, and the following year, the multinational North Atlantic Bloom Experiment (NABE) set up the standard for future process studies in other oceans.

    The Operational Goal of JGOFS was to assess more accurately, and understand better the processes controlling, regional to global and seasonal to interannual fluxes of carbon between the atmosphere, surface ocean and ocean interior, and their sensitivity to climate changes.