An assessment of the Atlantic and Arctic sea-air CO2 fluxes, 1990-2009 ...

• Main Authors: Schuster, Ute, McKinley, Galen A., Bates, Natalie, Chevallier, Frédéric, Doney, Scott C., Fay, Amanda, Gonzalez-Davila, Melchor, Gruber, Nicolas, Jones, Steve D., Krijnen, J., Landschützer, Peter, Lefèvre, Nathalie, Manizza, Manfredi, Mathis, Jeremy T., Metzl, Nicolas, Olsen, Are, Rios, Arantxa Fuentes, Roedenbeck, Christian, Santana-Casiano, J. Magdalena, Takahashi, Taro, Wanninkhof, Rik, Watson, Andrew J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: ETH Zurich 2013
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000064160; http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/64160

The Atlantic and Arctic Oceans are critical components of the global carbon cycle. Here we quantify the net sea–air CO2 flux, for the first time, across different methodologies for consistent time and space scales for the Atlantic and Arctic basins. We present the long-term mean, seasonal cycle, interannual variability and trends in sea–air CO2 flux for the period 1990 to 2009, and assign an uncertainty to each. We use regional cuts from global observations and modeling products, specifically a pCO2-based CO2 flux climatology, flux estimates from the inversion of oceanic and atmospheric data, and results from six ocean biogeochemical models. Additionally, we use basin-wide flux estimates from surface ocean pCO2 observations based on two distinct methodologies. Our estimate of the contemporary sea–air flux of CO2 (sum of anthropogenic and natural components) by the Atlantic between 40° S and 79° N is −0.49 ± 0.05 Pg C yr−1, and by the Arctic it is −0.12 ± 0.06 Pg C yr−1, leading to a combined sea–air flux of ... : Biogeosciences, 10 (1) ...