Oceanic sources, sinks, and transport of atmospheric CO 2

We synthesize estimates of the contemporary net air‐sea CO 2 flux on the basis of an inversion of interior ocean carbon observations using a suite of 10 ocean general circulation models (Mikaloff Fletcher et al., 2006, 2007) and compare them to estimates based on a new climatology of the air‐sea difference of the partial pressure of CO 2 ( p CO 2 ) (Takahashi et al., 2008). These two independent flux estimates reveal a consistent description of the regional distribution of annual mean sources and sinks of atmospheric CO 2 for the decade of the 1990s and the early 2000s with differences at the regional level of generally less than 0.1 Pg C a −1 . This distribution is characterized by outgassing in the tropics,…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• UO
  University of Leeds
• EC
  European Commission
• NO
  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration