Magnitude, trends, and variability of the global ocean carbon sink from 1985 to 2018

DeVries, Tim, Yamamoto, Kana, Wanninkhof, Rik, Gruber, Nicolas, Hauck, Judith, Müller, Jens Daniel, Bopp, Laurent, Carroll, Dustin, Carter, Brendan, Chau, Thi Tuyet Trang, Doney, Scott C., Gehlen, Marion, Gloege, Lucas, Gregor, Luke, Henson, Stephanie, Kim, Ji Hyun, Iida, Yosuke, Ilyina, Tatiana, Landschützer, Peter, Le Quéré, Corinne ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2319-0452, Munro, David, Nissen, Cara, Patara, Lavinia, Pérez, Fiz F., Resplandy, Laure, Rodgers, Keith B., Schwinger, Jörg, Séférian, Roland, Sicardi, Valentina, Terhaar, Jens, Triñanes, Joaquin, Tsujino, Hiroyuki, Watson, Andrew, Yasunaka, Sayaka and Zeng, Jiye (2023) Magnitude, trends, and variability of the global ocean carbon sink from 1985 to 2018. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 37 (10). ISSN 0886-6236

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Abstract

This contribution to the RECCAP2 (REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes) assessment analyzes the processes that determine the global ocean carbon sink, and its trends and variability over the period 1985–2018, using a combination of models and observation-based products. The mean sea-air CO2 flux from 1985 to 2018 is −1.6 ± 0.2 PgC yr−1 based on an ensemble of reconstructions of the history of sea surface pCO2 (pCO2 products). Models indicate that the dominant component of this flux is the net oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2, which is estimated at −2.1 ± 0.3 PgC yr−1 by an ensemble of ocean biogeochemical models, and −2.4 ± 0.1 PgC yr−1 by two ocean circulation inverse models. The ocean also degasses about 0.65 ± 0.3 PgC yr−1 of terrestrially derived CO2, but this process is not fully resolved by any of the models used here. From 2001 to 2018, the pCO2 products reconstruct a trend in the ocean carbon sink of −0.61 ± 0.12 PgC yr−1 decade−1, while biogeochemical models and inverse models diagnose an anthropogenic CO2-driven trend of −0.34 ± 0.06 and −0.41 ± 0.03 PgC yr−1 decade−1, respectively. This implies a climate-forced acceleration of the ocean carbon sink in recent decades, but there are still large uncertainties on the magnitude and cause of this trend. The interannual to decadal variability of the global carbon sink is mainly driven by climate variability, with the climate-driven variability exceeding the CO2-forced variability by 2–3 times. These results suggest that anthropogenic CO2 dominates the ocean CO2 sink, while climate-driven variability is potentially large but highly uncertain and not consistently captured across different methods.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Funding Information: TD acknowledges support from the US National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-1948955. RW and BR are supported by funding from NOAA's Global Ocean Monitoring and Observations (GOMO) Program. The CICOES and PMEL contributions to this work are numbers 2023-1260 and 5497, respectively. JDM, LG, and NG acknowledge support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant agreement no. 821003 (project 4C) and no. 820989 (project COMFORT). JH acknowledges funding from the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association (Helmholtz Young Investigator Group Marine Carbon and Ecosystem Feedbacks in the Earth System (MarESys), Grant VH-NG-1301) and from ERC-2022-STG OceanPeak, Grant agreement 101077209. DC acknowledges support from the NASA Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems (CCE) program under Grant 80NSSC22K0154. SCD acknowledges support from the NSF Center for Chemical Currencies of a Microbial Planet (C-CoMP) (NSF Award 2019589). SAH was supported by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (GOCART, agreement number 724416). PL was supported by Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) contract I001821N. CN acknowledges funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant agreement No 820989 (project COMFORT). LP acknowledges funding from the project PA 3075/2-1 by the German Research Foundation and the North German Supercomputing Alliance (HLRN) for providing computing power for the experiments. FFP was supported by the BOCATS2 project (PID2019-104279GB-C21) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. KBR was supported by the Institute for Basic Sciences (IBS), Republic of Korea, under IBS-R028-D1. JS acknowledges funding from the Research Council of Norway (Grant 270061) and computational/storage resources provided by UNINET/sigma2 (nn/ns2980k). JTH was funded by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Postdoctoral Scholar Program, the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 821003 (project 4C, Climate-Carbon Interactions in the Current Century), and the Swiss National Science Foundation under Grant 200020_200511. CLQ acknowledges funding from the European Union project 4C (Grant 821003) and the Royal Society (Grant RP\R1\191063), and support from UEA’s High Performance Computing services. TTTC and MG acknowledge financial support by the European Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) MOB-TAC project for the joint development with F. Chevallier of the CMEMS-LSCE-FFNN model.
Uncontrolled Keywords: anthropogenic carbon,carbon cycle,climate change,ocean,reccap2,global and planetary change,environmental chemistry,environmental science(all),atmospheric science,sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300/2306
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups: University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 17 Jul 2024 10:31
Last Modified: 29 Nov 2024 01:51
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/95937
DOI: 10.1029/2023GB007780

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