Surface underway measurements of partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2), water temperature, salinity and other parameters during the R/V Algoa Benguela Air-Sea CO2 and Heat Flux Experiment (BenFlex21) cruise (EXPOCODE 91AL20211206) in the coastal waters of of South Africa, South Atlantic Ocean from 2021-12-06 to 2021-12-19 (NCEI Accession 0288036)

This dataset consists of surface underway measurements collected during the R/V Algoa Benguela Air-Sea CO2 and Heat Flux Experiment (BenFlex21) cruise (EXPOCODE 91AL20211206) in the coastal waters of South Africa, South Atlantic Ocean from 2021-12-06 to 2021-12-19. The sea-surface partial pressure (pCO2) was measured off the west coast of South Africa as part of the Benguela Air-Sea CO2 and Heat Flux Experiment (BenFlex21). BenFlex21 was initially planned to take place onboard the SA Agulhas II polar research ship but for technical reasons, that was not possible. The experiment was then re-planned to take place in the southern Benguela Upwelling System (sBUS) on a long-term observational line in St Helena Bay. The core goal of the experiment was to examine, through top-down Eddy Co-Variance and bottom-up in situ ocean observations, the hypothesis that small differences between the skin, foundation, and bulk temperatures are causing an underestimation of the air-sea flux of CO2 that can influence the magnitude of the global ocean sink (Watson et al., 2020; 1992; Woolf et al., 2017).