The role of the Southern Ocean as a source or a
sink for CO2 in the modern ocean is heavily disputed, its
interannual variability is unknown, and its control on atmospheric CO2
during glaciations is suspected but still not understood nor quantified. We estimate the variability of the air-sea CO2
fluxes in the Southern Ocean for the 1992-2003 period using the spatio-temporal
distribution of atmospheric CO2 measurements from 12 stations in the
Southern Ocean and 43 stations worldwide.
Our results show basin-scale variability of ±0.1 to 0.3 PgC/y that are
related to physical variability in the Southern Ocean.
Author: C. Le Quéré, C. Rödenbeck, E. T. Buitenhuis, et al
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