Oceanic carbon uptake could falter

(Climate News Network, 20 Mar 2019) What does oceanic carbon uptake achieve? Greenhouse gas that sinks below the waves slows global warming a little and makes the water more acidic.

Scientists can now put a measure to the role of the waves as a climate shock absorber: they estimate that oceanic carbon uptake by the deep blue seas has consumed 34 billion tonnes of man-made carbon from the atmosphere between the years 1994 and 2007.

This is just about 31% of all the carbon emitted in that time by car exhausts, power station chimneys, aircraft, ships, tractors and scorched forest, as human economies expand and ever more fossil fuel is consumed.

This confident figure is based on a global survey of the chemistry and other physical properties of the ocean by scientists from seven nations on more than 50 research cruises, taking measurements of the ocean from the surface to a depth of six kilometres.

The researchers report in the journal Science that they already had the results of a global carbon survey of the oceans conducted at the close of the last century, and had calculated that from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution – when humans started using coal, and then oil and gas – to 1994, the oceans had already absorbed 118 billion tonnes.

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Climate News Network, 20 Mar 2019: Oceanic carbon uptake could falter