Update on the Temperature Corrections of Global Air‐Sea CO 2 Flux Estimates

Dong, Y, Bakker, DCE, Bell, TG, Huang, B, Landschützer, P, Liss, PS and Yang, M 2022 Update on the Temperature Corrections of Global Air‐Sea CO 2 Flux Estimates. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 36 (9). https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GB007360

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Abstract/Summary

The oceans are a major carbon sink. Sea surface temperature (SST) is a crucial variable in the calculation of the air-sea carbon dioxide (CO2) flux from surface observations. Any bias in the SST or any upper ocean vertical temperature gradient (e.g., the cool skin effect) potentially generates a bias in the CO2 flux estimates. A recent study suggested a substantial increase (∼50% or ∼0.9 Pg C yr−1) in the global ocean CO2 uptake due to this temperature effect. Here, we use a gold standard buoy SST data set as the reference to assess the accuracy of insitu SST used for flux calculation. A physical model is then used to estimate the cool skin effect, which varies with latitude. The bias-corrected SST (assessed by buoy SST) coupled with the physics-based cool skin correction increases the average ocean CO2 uptake by ∼35% (0.6 Pg C yr−1) from 1982 to 2020, which is substantially smaller than the previous correction. After these temperature considerations, we estimate an average net ocean CO2 uptake of 2.2 ± 0.4 Pg C yr−1 from 1994 to 2007 based on an ensemble of surface observation-based flux estimates, in line with the independent interior ocean carbon storage estimate corrected for the river induced natural outgassing flux (2.1 ± 0.4 Pg C yr−1)

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Divisions:	Plymouth Marine Laboratory > Science Areas > Marine Biochemistry and Observations
Depositing User:	S Hawkins
Date made live:	18 May 2023 14:37
Last Modified:	18 May 2023 14:37
URI:	https://plymsea.ac.uk/id/eprint/9936

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