Investigators: Emmanuel Boss, Michael Behrenfeld, and Wayne Slade Affiliations: UMaine (MISC Lab), OSU, and UMaine (MISC Lab) The particulate absorption and attenuation database is made up of ac-9 based measurements conducted in the tropical Pacific Ocean since 2005. Measurements were made on clean flow through seawater. Particulate absorption and attenuation were calculated from the difference between one minute averaged data collected with and without a 0.2micron filter. These data, being the difference of filtered and unfiltered measurements are therefore calibration independent. See Boss et al., 2007, Hydrobiologia for more explanation. The particulate absorption data were corrected for scattering following method 3 (ac-9 manual). That is, we assumed negligible absorpton at 715nm and that the scattering correction is proportional to the scattering signal. For more detailed information on the TAO cruises (e.g., sea state, CTD data, etc), please see the TAO web site at http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/ and match up cruises by date and location.