Observation‐based trends of the Southern Ocean carbon sink
Ritter, R.; Landschützer, P.; Gruber, N.; Fay, A.R.; Iida, Y.; Jones, S.; Nakaoka, S.; Park, G.-H.; Peylin, P.; Rodenbeck, C.; Rodgers, K.B.; Shutler, J.D.; Zeng, J. (2017). Observation‐based trends of the Southern Ocean carbon sink. Geophys. Res. Lett. 44(24): 12339-12348. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017gl074837
In: Geophysical Research Letters. American Geophysical Union: Washington. ISSN 0094-8276; e-ISSN 1944-8007, more
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| Authors | | Top |
- Ritter, R.
- Landschützer, P., more
- Gruber, N.
- Fay, A.R.
- Iida, Y.
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- Jones, S.
- Nakaoka, S.
- Park, G.-H.
- Peylin, P.
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- Rodenbeck, C.
- Rodgers, K.B.
- Shutler, J.D.
- Zeng, J.
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| Abstract |
The Southern Ocean (SO) carbon sink has strengthened substantially since the year 2000, following a decade of a weakening trend. However, the surface ocean pCO2 data underlying this trend reversal are sparse, requiring a substantial amount of extrapolation to map the data. Here we use nine different pCO2 mapping products to investigate the SO trends and their sensitivity to the mapping procedure. We find a robust temporal coherence for the entire SO, with eight of the nine products agreeing on the sign of the decadal trends, that is, a weakening CO2 sink trend in the 1990s (on average 0.22 ± 0.24 Pg C yr−1 decade−1), and a strengthening sink trend during the 2000s (−0.35 ± 0.23 Pg C yr−1 decade−1). Spatially, the multiproduct mean reveals rather uniform trends, but the confidence is limited, given the small number of statistically significant trends from the individual products, particularly during the data-sparse 1990–1999 period. |
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