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Uptake and Storage of Carbon Dioxide in the Ocean: The Global CO2 Survey

Richard A. Feely1, Christopher L. Sabine2, Taro Takahashi3, and Rik Wanninkhof4

1Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Seattle, Washington, 98115
2Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195
3Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York
4Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Miami, Florida

Oceanography, 14(4), 18–32 (2001).
Copyright ©2001 by The Oceanography Society. Further electronic distribution is not allowed.

Gallery of Figures and Tables

Figure 1

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the carbon dioxide (CO2) system in seawater. The 1 x CO2 concentrations are for a surface ocean in equilibrium with a pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 level of 280 ppm. The 2 x CO2 concentrations are for a surface ocean in equilibrium with an atmospheric CO2 level of 560 ppm. Current model projections indicate that this level could be reached sometime in the second half of this century. The atmospheric values are in units of ppm. The oceanic concentrations, which are for the surface mixed layer, are in units of µmol kgto the minus 1.

Figure 2

Figure 2. The Global Survey of CO2 in the Ocean: cruise tracks and stations occupied between 1991 and 1998.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Distribution of climatological mean sea-air pCO2 difference (DeltapCO2) for the reference year 1995 representing non-El Niño conditions in February (a) and August (b). These maps are based on about 940,000 measurements of surface water pCO2 from 1958 through 2000. The pink lines indicate the edges of ice fields. The yellow-red colors indicate regions with a net release of CO2 into the atmosphere, and the blue-purple colors indicate regions with a net uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere. The mean monthly atmospheric pCO2 value in each pixel in 1995, (pCO2)air, is computed using (pCO2)air = (CO2)air × (Pb - pH2O). (CO2)air is the monthly mean atmospheric CO2 concentration (mole fraction of CO2 in dry air) from the GLOBALVIEW database (2000); Pb is the climatological mean barometric pressure at sea level from the Atlas of Surface Marine Data (1994); and the water vapor pressure, pH2O, is computed using the mixed layer water temperature and salinity from the World Ocean Database (1998) of NODC/NOAA. The sea-air pCO2 difference values in the reference year 1995 have been computed by subtracting the mean monthly atmospheric pCO2 value from the mean monthly surface ocean water pCO2 value in each pixel.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Graph of the different relationships that have been developed for the estimation of the gas transfer velocity, k, as a function of wind speed. The relationships were developed from wind-wave tank experiments, oceanic observations, global constraints and basic theory. The different forms of the relationships are summarized in Table 1. U10 is wind speed at 10 m above the sea surface.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Effects of the various gas transfer/wind speed relationships on the estimated air-sea exchange flux of CO2 in the ocean as a function of latitude. The global effects on the net air-sea flux are given in Table 1.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Distribution of the climatological mean annual sea-air CO2 flux (moles CO2 mto the minus 2 yrto the minus 1) for the reference year 1995 representing non-El Niño conditions. This has been computed using the mean monthly distribution of sea-air pCO2 difference, the climatological NCEP 41-year mean wind speed and the wind-speed dependence of the CO2 gas transfer velocity of Wanninkhof (1992). The yellow-red colors indicate a region characterized by a net release of CO2 to the atmosphere, and the blue-purple colors indicate a region with a net uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere. This map yields an annual oceanic uptake flux for CO2 of 2.2 ± 0.4 Pg C yrto the minus 1.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Zonal mean pre-industrial distributions of dissolved inorganic carbon (in units of µmol kgto the minus 1) along north-south transects in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. The Pacific and Indian Ocean data are from the Global CO2 Survey (this study), and the Atlantic Ocean data are from Gruber (1998).

Figure 8

Figure 8. Zonal mean distributions of estimated anthropogenic CO2 concentrations (in units of µmol kgto the minus 1) along north-south transects in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. The Pacific and Indian Ocean data are from the Global CO2 Survey (this study), and the Atlantic Ocean data are from Gruber (1998).

Figure 9

Figure 9. Zonal mean anthropogenic CO2 inventories (in units of moles mto the minus 2) in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.

Table 1

Table 2


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