The world’s oceans act as an important sink for carbon dioxide (CO₂).
The world’s oceans act as an important sink for carbon dioxide (CO₂). To date, they have absorbed around a quarter of human-induced CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere, thereby stabilizing the global climate system. Without this sink, the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere would be much higher and global warming would have already significantly exceeded the 1.5-degree warming limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. At the same time, the oceans absorb around 90% of the excess planetary heat that’s building up from global warming.
A new study published in Nature Climate Change reveals how the ocean’s carbon-absorbing capacity responded to the record-breaking temperatures of 2023. An international research team, led by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), investigated for the first time whether and how the extreme ocean temperatures recorded two years ago impacted this crucial carbon sink, based on oceanic CO₂ measurements from a global observation network. The study is one of the first to draw on actual observations as a foundation for insights into the behavior of a warming ocean. The researchers relied on CO₂ observations from research vessels, cargo ships and buoys, combined with satellite data and machine learning to establish global maps of surface CO₂ levels. This enabled them to calculate the CO₂ fluxes between water and air at the sea surface.
Read more at: Columbia Climate School
Photo Credit: Philip Thurston
