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Ocean geochemistry

Carbon dioxide uptake at sea

Nature volume 396, pages 521–522 (1998)Cite this article

To what extent will the world's oceans be able to take up carbon dioxide and reduce its rate of increase in the atmosphere? Numerical modellers1,2 have tried to give a provisional answer. But their estimates of the main parameters differ considerably — particularly in the Southern Ocean and the tropics, where the flux of anthropogenic CO2across the air-sea interface seems to be largest. On page 560 of this issue3, however, Peng et al. claim that it is now possible to make a direct and reliable determination of anthropogenic CO2penetration into the ocean. Their approach is based on the temporal variation of measurements of the total dissolved inorganic carbon concentration in seawater.

Before the beginning of the industrial era (around 1850), the global CO2cycle was in steady state on a decadal timescale. Since then, the atmospheric concentration of CO2has risen increasingly rapidly; now, about one-half of the CO2emitted by the combustion of fossil carbon remains in the atmosphere, the rest being partly dissolved in the oceans and partly stored by the terrestrial biosphere. Researchers have long tried to measure the flux of anthropogenic CO2at the air-sea interface and through the oceans' water column, to determine the geographical distribution and rate of CO2penetration into deep waters. This is no easy task — data are scarce on the time scales required, and the annual increase of the signal is small relative to the local temporal variability in the oceans' dissolved inorganic carbon.

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  1. the Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie Marines, Université Pierre et Marie Curie/CNRS, boîte 134, 4 place Jussieu, Paris, 75252 Cedex 05, France

    Alain Poisson

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  1. Alain Poisson
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Poisson, A. Carbon dioxide uptake at sea. Nature 396, 521–522 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/25002

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