Here, we present a comprehensive, seasonal observation of chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) as well as dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) including ocean water column samples and Lead water samples based on the year round (November 2019 - September 2020) expedition “Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate” (MOSAiC).Ocean water samples taken from the CTD/rosette on Polarstern or the one based on the ice floe ('Ocean City', Rabe et al., 2022) were filtered through pre-combusted (450 °C, 5 h) glass fiber filters (Whatman; GF/F), subsequently for DOC and total dissolved nitrogen (TDN), as well as absorbance and fluorescence excitation-emission matrices (EEMs) measurements. Lead water samples were collected using the peristatic pump (Master flex E/S portable sampler) between August 25th and September 4th 2020 in summer in the Amundsen Basin, then filtered through an in line 0.2 µm pore size Sterivex cartridge filter (polyethersulfone membrane) and subsequently for DOC and TDN, as well as absorbance and EEMs measurements. Salinity for Lead water samples was measured with a hand-held multi parameter meter (Cond 340i, WTW). DOC and TDN were determined by high temperature catalytic oxidation (HTCO) and non dispersive infrared spectroscopy and chemiluminescence detection (TOC VCPN, Shimadzu; for details see Ksionzek et al., 2018). EEMs were measured using a spectrofluorometer (Aqualog, Horiba) equipped with a charge-coupled device (CCD) detector. CDOM absorbance spectra were acquired by a spectrophotometer (UV2700, Shimadzu) in a quartz cuvette with an optical path length of 10.To inventive the influence of the transpolar drift (TPD) on the MOSAiC expedition, we compared the MOSAiC ocean water columns with the ocean water columns in the western Nansen Basin and Yermak Plateau from the Norwegian young sea ICE (N ICE2015) expedition (January to June 2015; Granskog et al., 2018), and the ocean water columns in the Bering Strait, Laptev Sea, and East Siberian Sea that were acquired during the expedition TA19_4 (September to October 2019, Hölemann et al., 2021).The EEMs combined with parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) model based on MOSAiC, N ICE2015 and TA19_4 expeditions were processed by the staRdom package in R studio (Version 3.5.1; Pucher et al., 2019). Five PARAFAC components were determined, subsequently we named as C475, C440, C395, C340, and C320 according to their fluorescence emission maxima.