Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO₂ Sink Due to Recent Climate Change

Corinne Le Quéré (1) , Christian Rödenbeck , Erik T. Buitenhuis , Thomas J. Conway , Ray Langenfelds , Antony Gomez , Casper Labuschagne , Michel Ramonet (2, 3) , Takakiyo Nakazawa (4) , Nicolas Metzl (5) , Nathan Gillett , Martin Heimann

1 UEA - University of East Anglia [Norwich]
2 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
3 ICOS-RAMCES - ICOS-RAMCES
4 Center for Atmospheric and Oceanic Studies [Sendai]
5 LOCEAN - Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques

Based on observed atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration and an inverse method, we estimate that the Southern Ocean sink of CO₂ 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 CO₂. 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 CO₂ in the short term (about 25 years) and possibly a higher level of stabilization of atmospheric CO₂ on a multicentury time scale.

Domaines: Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]; Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]

Corinne Le Quéré, Christian Rödenbeck, Erik T. Buitenhuis, Thomas J. Conway, Ray Langenfelds, et al.. Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO₂ Sink Due to Recent Climate Change. Science, 2007, 316 (5832), pp.1735-1738. ⟨10.1126/SCIENCE.1136188⟩. ⟨hal-00770694⟩