Strong Southern Ocean carbon uptake evident in airborne observations - PubMed (original) (raw)

. 2021 Dec 3;374(6572):1275-1280.

doi: 10.1126/science.abi4355. Epub 2021 Dec 2.

Britton B Stephens 1, Kathryn McKain 2 3, Colm Sweeney 3, Ralph F Keeling 4, Eric A Kort 5, Eric J Morgan 4, Jonathan D Bent 1 4, Naveen Chandra 6, Frederic Chevallier 7, Róisín Commane 8, Bruce C Daube 9, Paul B Krummel 10, Zoë Loh 10, Ingrid T Luijkx 11, David Munro 2 3, Prabir Patra 12, Wouter Peters 11 13, Michel Ramonet 7, Christian Rödenbeck 14, Ann Stavert 10, Pieter Tans 3, Steven C Wofsy 9 15

Affiliations

Strong Southern Ocean carbon uptake evident in airborne observations

Matthew C Long et al. Science. 2021.

Abstract

The Southern Ocean plays an important role in determining atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), yet estimates of air-sea CO2 flux for the region diverge widely. In this study, we constrained Southern Ocean air-sea CO2 exchange by relating fluxes to horizontal and vertical CO2 gradients in atmospheric transport models and applying atmospheric observations of these gradients to estimate fluxes. Aircraft-based measurements of the vertical atmospheric CO2 gradient provide robust flux constraints. We found an annual mean flux of –0.53 ± 0.23 petagrams of carbon per year (net uptake) south of 45°S during the period 2009–2018. This is consistent with the mean of atmospheric inversion estimates and surface-ocean partial pressure of CO2 (_P_co2)–based products, but our data indicate stronger annual mean uptake than suggested by recent interpretations of profiling float observations.

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