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Strengthening seasonal marine CO2 variations due to increasing atmospheric CO2

Abstract

The increase of atmospheric CO2 (ref. 1) has been predicted to impact the seasonal cycle of inorganic carbon in the global ocean2,3, yet the observational evidence to verify this prediction has been missing. Here, using an observation-based product of the oceanic partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) covering the past 34 years, we find that the winter-to-summer difference of the pCO2 has increased on average by 2.2 ± 0.4 μatm per decade from 1982 to 2015 poleward of 10° latitude. This is largely in agreement with the trend expected from thermodynamic considerations. Most of the increase stems from the seasonality of the drivers acting on an increasing oceanic pCO2 caused by the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere. In the high latitudes, the concurrent ocean-acidification-induced changes in the buffer capacity of the ocean enhance this effect. This strengthening of the seasonal winter-to-summer difference pushes the global ocean towards critical thresholds earlier, inducing stress to ocean ecosystems and fisheries4. Our study provides observational evidence for this strengthening seasonal difference in the oceanic carbon cycle on a global scale, illustrating the inevitable consequences of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

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Fig. 1: Trends in the seasonal difference of sea surface pCO2 1982–2015
Fig. 2: The changing seasonal sea surface pCO2 cycle
Fig. 3: Separation of the five-year mean seasonal cycle of pCO2 into its thermal and non-thermal components
Fig. 4: Regional and zonal mean trends in the winter-minus-summer difference.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Marotzke and H. Li from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg for their comments. P.L. was supported by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science. N.G. was supported by ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich) and by European Union grant 283080 (GEOCARBON). D.C.E.B. was supported by the United Kingdom Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry Blue Carbon project (NE/K00168X/1; funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). K.D.S. was partly supported through the Cluster of Excellence ‘CliSAP’ (EXC177), University of Hamburg, funded through the German Research Foundation (DFG).

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P.L. and N.G. designed the study with input from D.C.E.B. N.G. and P.L. developed the theoretical framework and wrote the paper together with D.C.E.B., I.S. and K.D.S. P.L. developed the neural network method and performed the analysis, assisted by N.G., I.S. and K.D.S. D.C.E.B. led the SOCAT synthesis effort that underlies this work. All authors discussed the results and implications and commented on the manuscript at all stages.

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Correspondence to Peter Landschützer.

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Supplementary Notes, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Figures 1–9 and Supplementary References

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Landschützer, P., Gruber, N., Bakker, D.C.E. et al. Strengthening seasonal marine CO2 variations due to increasing atmospheric CO2. Nature Clim Change 8, 146–150 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0057-x

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