Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO 2 Sink Due to Recent Climate Change

Based on observed atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration and an inverse method, we estimate that the Southern Ocean sink of CO 2 has weakened between 1981 and 2004 by 0.08 petagrams of carbon per year per decade relative to the trend expected from the large increase in atmospheric CO 2 . W...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Le Quéré, Corinne, Rödenbeck, Christian, Buitenhuis, Erik T., Conway, Thomas J., Langenfelds, Ray, Gomez, Antony, Labuschagne, Casper, Ramonet, Michel, Nakazawa, Takakiyo, Metzl, Nicolas, Gillett, Nathan, Heimann, Martin
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2007
Subjects:
Southern Ocean
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1136188
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1136188
Description
Summary:Based on observed atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration and an inverse method, we estimate that the Southern Ocean sink of CO 2 has weakened between 1981 and 2004 by 0.08 petagrams of carbon per year per decade relative to the trend expected from the large increase in atmospheric CO 2 . We attribute this weakening to the observed increase in Southern Ocean winds resulting from human activities, which is projected to continue in the future. Consequences include a reduction of the efficiency of the Southern Ocean sink of CO 2 in the short term (about 25 years) and possibly a higher level of stabilization of atmospheric CO 2 on a multicentury time scale.

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