The US Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (US JGOFS) seeks "to understand the processes governing the production and fate of biogenic material in the sea well enough to predict their influences on, and responses to global scale perturbations" (JGOFS, 1984 "identifying and quantifying the physical, chemical and biological processes controlling biogeochemical cycling in the ocean, and their interaction with the global atmosphere" (JGOFS, 1984, achieving a predictive capability is that the processes and interactions quantified today respond linearly to global scale perturbations and that knowledge of the present biogeochemical system dynamics will, therefore, allow us to predict response to global perturbations with accuracy. This is a fundamental assumption and is the keystone of the JGOFS strategy for predictive capability. The scientific justification for this assumption has never been stated.
