Inverse estimates of the oceanic sources and sinks of natural CO2 and the implied oceanic carbon transport

• Published in: Global Biogeochemical Cycles
• Main Authors: Mikaloff Fletcher, Sara E., Gruber, Nicolas, Jacobson, Andrew R., Gloor, Emanuel, Doney, Scott C., Dutkiewicz, Stephanie, Gerber, Markus, Follows, Michael J., Joos, Fortunat, Lindsay, Keith, Menemenlis, Dimitris, Mouchet, Anne, Muller, Simon A., Sarmiento, Jorge L.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2007
• Subjects: Air-sea CO2 exchange; Natural carbon cycle; Ocean inversion; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3402

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles 21 (2007): , doi:10.1029/2006GB002751. We use an inverse method to estimate the global-scale pattern of the air-sea flux of natural CO2, i.e., the component of the CO2 flux due to the natural carbon cycle that already existed in preindustrial times, on the basis of ocean interior observations of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and other tracers, from which we estimate ΔC gasex , i.e., the component of the observed DIC that is due to the gas exchange of natural CO2. We employ a suite of 10 different Ocean General Circulation Models (OGCMs) to quantify the error arising from uncertainties in the modeled transport required to link the interior ocean observations to the surface fluxes. The results from the contributing OGCMs are weighted using a model skill score based on a comparison of each model's simulated natural radiocarbon with observations. We find a pattern of air-sea flux of natural CO2 characterized by outgassing in the Southern Ocean between 44°S and 59°S, vigorous uptake at midlatitudes of both hemispheres, and strong outgassing in the tropics. In the Northern Hemisphere and the tropics, the inverse estimates generally agree closely with the natural CO2 flux results from forward simulations of coupled OGCM-biogeochemistry models undertaken as part of the second phase of the Ocean Carbon Model Intercomparison Project (OCMIP-2). The OCMIP-2 simulations find far less air-sea exchange than the inversion south of 20°S, but more recent forward OGCM studies are in better agreement with the inverse estimates in the Southern Hemisphere. The strong source and sink pattern south of 20°S was not apparent in an earlier inversion study, because the choice of region boundaries led to a partial cancellation of the sources and sinks. We show that the inversely estimated flux pattern is ...