Research Finds Oceans Are Becoming Less Effective Carbon Sinks

Bad news on the carbon front today. Thanks to a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we can see evidence that the world's oceans, which typically act as a “carbon sink” to absorb carbon emissions, are losing their ability to take up excess carbon because they are warming.

While previous studies of the topic have yielded conflicting results, according to an article in TG Daily today, this new study combined existing data from 1981 to 2009, methodologies, and locations covering most of the North Atlantic into a single time series for each of three large regions called gyres. In oceanography, a gyre (there are five on earth) is any large system of rotating ocean currents, particularly those involved with large wind movements.

Scientists in the University of Wisconsin study discovered a high degree of natural variability that often masked longer-term patterns of change, and which could explain why previous conclusions have disagreed, reported TG Daily. The study's authors said they discovered that ocean carbon uptake is highly dependent on exactly when and where you look.

“Because the ocean is so variable, we need at least 25 years’ worth of data to really see the effect of carbon accumulation in the atmosphere,” said Galen McKinley, the study's lead researcher and an assistant professor in the university's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic (News - Alert) Sciences. “This is a big issue in many branches of climate science – what is natural variability, and what is climate change?”

As water's ability to suck up excess carbon decreases as the water warms, the earth's oceans – which are rising in temperature – are becoming less effective at cleaning carbon out of the atmosphere, say the studies' authors.

Dr. McKinley says that though the oceans' ability to act as a carbon sink is being reduced, its carbon content may not be rising faster than that of the air.

“More likely what we’re going to see is that the ocean will keep its equilibration but it doesn’t have to take up as much carbon to do it because it’s getting warmer at the same time,” she said. “We are already seeing this in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre, and this is some of the first evidence for climate damping the ocean’s ability to take up carbon from the atmosphere.”

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