Enhanced ocean CO2 uptake due to near-surface temperature gradients

Ford, DJ, Shutler, JD, Blanco-Sacristán, J, Corrigan, S, Bell, TG, Yang, M, Kitidis, V, Nightingale, PD, Brown, IJ, Wimmer, W, Woolf, DK, Casal, T, Donlon, CJ, Tilstone, GH and Ashton, I 2024 Enhanced ocean CO2 uptake due to near-surface temperature gradients. Nature Geoscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01570-7

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Abstract/Summary

The ocean annually absorbs about a quarter of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Global estimates of air–sea CO2 fuxes are typically based on bulk measurements of CO2 in air and seawater and neglect the efects of vertical temperature gradients near the ocean surface. Theoretical and laboratory observations indicate that these gradients alter air–sea CO2 fuxes, because the air–sea CO2 concentration diference is highly temperature sensitive. However, in situ feld evidence supporting their efect is so far lacking. Here we present independent direct air–sea CO2 fuxes alongside indirect bulk fuxes collected along repeat transects in the Atlantic Ocean (50° N to 50° S) in 2018 and 2019. We fnd that accounting for vertical temperature gradients reduces the diference between direct and indirect fuxes from 0.19 mmol m−2 d−1 to 0.08 mmol m−2 d−1 (N = 148). This implies an increase in the Atlantic CO2 sink of ~0.03 PgC yr−1 (~7% of the Atlantic Ocean sink). These feld results validate theoretical, modelling and observational-based eforts, all of which predicted that accounting for near-surface temperature gradients would increase estimates of global ocean CO2 uptake. Accounting for this increased ocean uptake will probably require some revision to how global carbon budgets are quantifed

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Divisions:	Plymouth Marine Laboratory > Science Areas > Marine Biochemistry and Observations
Depositing User:	S Hawkins
Date made live:	01 Nov 2024 17:17
Last Modified:	01 Nov 2024 17:17
URI:	https://plymsea.ac.uk/id/eprint/10319

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