A FIRST ESTIMATE OF PRESENT AND PRE-INDUSTRIAL AIR-SEA CO2 FLUX PATTERNS BASED ON OCEAN CARBON MEASUREMENTS.

Reference

M. Gloor , N. Gruber, J. L. Sarmiento, C. S. Sabine, R. Feely & C. Rödenbeck, A first estimate of present and pre-industrial air-sea CO2 flux patterns based on ocean interior carbon measurements and models, Geophysical Research Letters, 30(1), doi:10.1029/2002GL015594, 2003.

Abstract
The exchange of CO2 across the air-sea interface is a main determinant of the distribution of atmospheric CO2 from which major conclusions about the carbon cycle are drawn, yet our knowledge of atmosphere-ocean fluxes still has major gaps. A new analysis based on recent ocean dissolved inorganic carbon data and models permits us to separately estimate the pre-industrial and present air-sea CO2 flux distributions without requiring knowledge of the gas exchange coefficient. We find a much smaller carbon sink at mid to high latitudes of the southern hemisphere than previous data based estimates (2) and a shift of ocean uptake to lower latitude regions compared to simulations. The total uptake of anthropogenic CO2 for 1990 is 1.8±0.3 PgC yr-1. Our ocean based results support the interpretation of the latitudinal distribution of atmospheric data as evidence for a large northern hemisphere land carbon sink.

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