Climate Change Reducing Ocean's Carbon Dioxide Uptake, New Analysis Shows

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Climate Change Reducing Ocean's Carbon Dioxide Uptake, New Analysis Shows



As one of the planet's largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.

But whether the ocean can continue mopping up human-produced carbon at the same rate is still up in the air. Previous studies on the topic have yielded conflicting results, says University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Galen McKinley.

In a new analysis published online July 10 in Nature Geoscience, McKinley and her colleagues identify a likely source of many of those inconsistencies and provide some of the first observational evidence that climate change is negatively impacting the ocean carbon sink.

"The ocean is taking up less carbon because of the warming caused by the carbon in the atmosphere," says McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a member of the Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

The analysis differs from previous studies in its scope across both time and space. One of the biggest challenges in asking how climate is affecting the ocean is simply a lack of data, McKinley says, with available information clustered along shipping lanes and other areas where scientists can take advantage of existing boat traffic. With a dearth of other sampling sites, many studies have simply extrapolated trends from limited areas to broader swaths of the ocean.

McKinley and colleagues at UW-Madison, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, and the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris expanded their analysis by combining existing data from a range of years (1981-2009), methodologies, and locations spanning most of the North Atlantic into a single time series for each of three large regions called gyres, defined by distinct physical and biological characteristics.

They found a high degree of natural variability that often masked longer-term patterns of change and could explain why previous conclusions have disagreed. They discovered that apparent trends in ocean carbon uptake are highly dependent on exactly when and where you look -- on the 10- to 15-year time scale, even overlapping time intervals sometimes suggested opposite effects.

"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," she says. "This is a big issue in many branches of climate science -- what is natural variability, and what is climate change?"

Working with nearly three decades of data, the researchers were able to cut through the variability and identify underlying trends in the surface CO2 throughout the North Atlantic.

During the past three decades, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have largely been matched by corresponding increases in dissolved carbon dioxide in the seawater. The gases equilibrate across the air-water interface, influenced by how much carbon is in the atmosphere and the ocean and how much carbon dioxide the water is able to hold as determined by its water chemistry.

But the researchers found that rising temperatures are slowing the carbon absorption across a large portion of the subtropical North Atlantic. Warmer water cannot hold as much carbon dioxide, so the ocean's carbon capacity is decreasing as it warms.

In watching for effects of increasing atmospheric carbon on the ocean's uptake, many people have looked for indications that the carbon content of the ocean is rising faster than that of the atmosphere, McKinley says. However, their new results show that the ocean sink could be weakening even without that visible sign.

"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 says. "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."

She stresses the need to improve available datasets and expand this type of analysis to other oceans, which are relatively less-studied than the North Atlantic, to continue to refine carbon uptake trends in different ocean regions. This information will be critical for decision-making, since any decrease in ocean uptake may require greater human efforts to control carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

McKinley's work on the project was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110710132816.htm

This could be a natural cycle---We don't know enough!
 
Oh gosh...where to begin...just a poorly written story all the way around. I hope the actual paper is not written so poorly.
 
Granny says, "Dat's right - carbon gonna build up inna atmosphere till there ain't no air to breathe, den we all gonna die...
:eek:
Study: Ocean Less Able to Mitigate Climate Change
July 12, 2011 - Capacity to take up the carbon humans put in the atmosphere is waning
The ocean’s capacity to take up the carbon humans put in the atmosphere is waning, according to a new study reported in the journal Nature Geoscience. Previous studies, with often contradictory results, show that the amount of atmospheric carbon absorbed by the oceans varies from year to year. University of Wisconsin oceanic sciences Professor Galen McKinley says her work - in collaboration with colleagues at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris - examines extended data analysis over time.

“As we look over that long period of data from 1981 and 2009 in the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic between south of the Gulf Stream and north of the equator there we see that the warming that is being driven by climate change is actually causing the carbon sink to be less efficient.” A carbon sink is anything that absorbs more carbon that it releases. A warm ocean cannot absorb and hold as much carbon as cooler waters. Short-term climate variability had masked the decades-long pattern of carbon uptake, McKinley says. “And so we are starting to see a distinguishable signal, whereby that warming of the ocean which is driven by climate change is making the carbon essentially less soluble in the ocean and is reducing the magnitude of that sink.”

Oceans now represent the largest natural carbon sink on Earth, absorbing about one-third of all the carbons humans put in the air by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas in power plants, cars and factories. McKinley says the work suggests that the ocean’s capacity to mitigate climate change may be waning. “This is a reason why we should be thinking even more about how we might reduce the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere because as these sinks become less efficient, the rate of climate warming will become faster and therefore the impacts on our civilization and our way of life will be even greater.”

The conditions the authors describe in the North Atlantic may be common in other oceans. McKinley says her team has already begun to test that hypothesis. She says it’s critically important that policy makers understand this trend, so they are able to make the kinds of decisions that can lessen the impact of climate change.

Source
 
The analysis differs from previous studies in its scope across both time and space. One of the biggest challenges in asking how climate is affecting the ocean is simply a lack of data, McKinley says, with available information clustered along shipping lanes and other areas where scientists can take advantage of existing boat traffic. With a dearth of other sampling sites, many studies have simply extrapolated trends from limited areas to broader swaths of the ocean.

IOW, they just made shit up to fit their desired outcome.

Maybe they could get Miss Cleo to review their stuff, to give them a little credibility.
 
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Climate Change Reducing Ocean's Carbon Dioxide Uptake, New Analysis Shows



As one of the planet's largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.

But whether the ocean can continue mopping up human-produced carbon at the same rate is still up in the air. Previous studies on the topic have yielded conflicting results, says University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Galen McKinley.

In a new analysis published online July 10 in Nature Geoscience, McKinley and her colleagues identify a likely source of many of those inconsistencies and provide some of the first observational evidence that climate change is negatively impacting the ocean carbon sink.

"The ocean is taking up less carbon because of the warming caused by the carbon in the atmosphere," says McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a member of the Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

The analysis differs from previous studies in its scope across both time and space. One of the biggest challenges in asking how climate is affecting the ocean is simply a lack of data, McKinley says, with available information clustered along shipping lanes and other areas where scientists can take advantage of existing boat traffic. With a dearth of other sampling sites, many studies have simply extrapolated trends from limited areas to broader swaths of the ocean.

McKinley and colleagues at UW-Madison, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, and the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris expanded their analysis by combining existing data from a range of years (1981-2009), methodologies, and locations spanning most of the North Atlantic into a single time series for each of three large regions called gyres, defined by distinct physical and biological characteristics.

They found a high degree of natural variability that often masked longer-term patterns of change and could explain why previous conclusions have disagreed. They discovered that apparent trends in ocean carbon uptake are highly dependent on exactly when and where you look -- on the 10- to 15-year time scale, even overlapping time intervals sometimes suggested opposite effects.

"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," she says. "This is a big issue in many branches of climate science -- what is natural variability, and what is climate change?"

Working with nearly three decades of data, the researchers were able to cut through the variability and identify underlying trends in the surface CO2 throughout the North Atlantic.

During the past three decades, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have largely been matched by corresponding increases in dissolved carbon dioxide in the seawater. The gases equilibrate across the air-water interface, influenced by how much carbon is in the atmosphere and the ocean and how much carbon dioxide the water is able to hold as determined by its water chemistry.

But the researchers found that rising temperatures are slowing the carbon absorption across a large portion of the subtropical North Atlantic. Warmer water cannot hold as much carbon dioxide, so the ocean's carbon capacity is decreasing as it warms.

In watching for effects of increasing atmospheric carbon on the ocean's uptake, many people have looked for indications that the carbon content of the ocean is rising faster than that of the atmosphere, McKinley says. However, their new results show that the ocean sink could be weakening even without that visible sign.

"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 says. "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."

She stresses the need to improve available datasets and expand this type of analysis to other oceans, which are relatively less-studied than the North Atlantic, to continue to refine carbon uptake trends in different ocean regions. This information will be critical for decision-making, since any decrease in ocean uptake may require greater human efforts to control carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

McKinley's work on the project was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Climate change reducing ocean's carbon dioxide uptake, new analysis shows

This could be a natural cycle---We don't know enough!

Now hold on a second, just recently you algorians claimed that CO2 saturating the oceans are making them more acidic. Remember, the whole more co2 absorbed by the oceans means oceans turn more and more acidic until it kills all the coral and shelled sea life...

Yeah, so now its just not gonna absorb anymore. If thats the case then the oceans aren't gonna turn into acid pools after all.... LOL you people are so eager to end the world you can't even settle on a method...:lol:
 
ScienceDaily: Your source for the latest research news and science breakthroughs -- updated daily
Science News
Share Blog Cite
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Climate Change Reducing Ocean's Carbon Dioxide Uptake, New Analysis Shows



As one of the planet's largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.

But whether the ocean can continue mopping up human-produced carbon at the same rate is still up in the air. Previous studies on the topic have yielded conflicting results, says University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Galen McKinley.

In a new analysis published online July 10 in Nature Geoscience, McKinley and her colleagues identify a likely source of many of those inconsistencies and provide some of the first observational evidence that climate change is negatively impacting the ocean carbon sink.

"The ocean is taking up less carbon because of the warming caused by the carbon in the atmosphere," says McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a member of the Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

The analysis differs from previous studies in its scope across both time and space. One of the biggest challenges in asking how climate is affecting the ocean is simply a lack of data, McKinley says, with available information clustered along shipping lanes and other areas where scientists can take advantage of existing boat traffic. With a dearth of other sampling sites, many studies have simply extrapolated trends from limited areas to broader swaths of the ocean.

McKinley and colleagues at UW-Madison, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, and the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris expanded their analysis by combining existing data from a range of years (1981-2009), methodologies, and locations spanning most of the North Atlantic into a single time series for each of three large regions called gyres, defined by distinct physical and biological characteristics.

They found a high degree of natural variability that often masked longer-term patterns of change and could explain why previous conclusions have disagreed. They discovered that apparent trends in ocean carbon uptake are highly dependent on exactly when and where you look -- on the 10- to 15-year time scale, even overlapping time intervals sometimes suggested opposite effects.

"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," she says. "This is a big issue in many branches of climate science -- what is natural variability, and what is climate change?"

Working with nearly three decades of data, the researchers were able to cut through the variability and identify underlying trends in the surface CO2 throughout the North Atlantic.

During the past three decades, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have largely been matched by corresponding increases in dissolved carbon dioxide in the seawater. The gases equilibrate across the air-water interface, influenced by how much carbon is in the atmosphere and the ocean and how much carbon dioxide the water is able to hold as determined by its water chemistry.

But the researchers found that rising temperatures are slowing the carbon absorption across a large portion of the subtropical North Atlantic. Warmer water cannot hold as much carbon dioxide, so the ocean's carbon capacity is decreasing as it warms.

In watching for effects of increasing atmospheric carbon on the ocean's uptake, many people have looked for indications that the carbon content of the ocean is rising faster than that of the atmosphere, McKinley says. However, their new results show that the ocean sink could be weakening even without that visible sign.

"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 says. "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."

She stresses the need to improve available datasets and expand this type of analysis to other oceans, which are relatively less-studied than the North Atlantic, to continue to refine carbon uptake trends in different ocean regions. This information will be critical for decision-making, since any decrease in ocean uptake may require greater human efforts to control carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

McKinley's work on the project was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Climate change reducing ocean's carbon dioxide uptake, new analysis shows

This could be a natural cycle---We don't know enough!

Now hold on a second, just recently you algorians claimed that CO2 saturating the oceans are making them more acidic. Remember, the whole more co2 absorbed by the oceans means oceans turn more and more acidic until it kills all the coral and shelled sea life...

Yeah, so now its just not gonna absorb anymore. If thats the case then the oceans aren't gonna turn into acid pools after all.... LOL you people are so eager to end the world you can't even settle on a method...:lol:





People were figuring out that ocean acidification wasn't a worry so as usual the hand wringers covered their bases by predicting both sides of the issue.
 
i really like the name Algorians for these climate change enthusiasts.. sounds like a sifi name for beings from another planet.. where is buck rogers when you need him?

The thing about the people who use the word is that they usually don't have the vaguest idea of what they're talking about. Those who know the subject, discuss it. Those that don't, talk about Gore.
 
Now hold on a second, just recently you algorians claimed that CO2 saturating the oceans are making them more acidic. Remember, the whole more co2 absorbed by the oceans means oceans turn more and more acidic until it kills all the coral and shelled sea life...

Yeah, so now its just not gonna absorb anymore. If thats the case then the oceans aren't gonna turn into acid pools after all.... LOL you people are so eager to end the world you can't even settle on a method...:lol:

This just proves you don't have the vaguest idea of what's happening. So, absorption in the oceans has slowed. It hasn't stopped or reversed, meaning the damage goes on. It also means more stays in the atmosphere, intercepting IR which should be headed for space, but gets redirected back towards earth. Thanks for the article, it not only proves you don't have a clue, it also demonstrates that there's more than one way CO2 can do damage to the environment. Sure some things may grow faster, but that's not the climate in which humans evolved and created civilization. This isn't about earth and what's "right" for it, but what's right for man.
 
Now hold on a second, just recently you algorians claimed that CO2 saturating the oceans are making them more acidic. Remember, the whole more co2 absorbed by the oceans means oceans turn more and more acidic until it kills all the coral and shelled sea life...

Yeah, so now its just not gonna absorb anymore. If thats the case then the oceans aren't gonna turn into acid pools after all.... LOL you people are so eager to end the world you can't even settle on a method...:lol:

This just proves you don't have the vaguest idea of what's happening. So, absorption in the oceans has slowed. It hasn't stopped or reversed, meaning the damage goes on. It also means more stays in the atmosphere, intercepting IR which should be headed for space, but gets redirected back towards earth. Thanks for the article, it not only proves you don't have a clue, it also demonstrates that there's more than one way CO2 can do damage to the environment. Sure some things may grow faster, but that's not the climate in which humans evolved and created civilization. This isn't about earth and what's "right" for it, but what's right for man.

Ladies and Gentlemen! I give you KornholeV, The Dancing Bear!!!!

LOL way to dance lil fella way to dance..:lol::clap2:
 
G, whatever it is you have between your ears, it ain't workin', boy.

Note that people are posting information from scientific articles. And all that you are doing is displaying the depths of your ignorance.
 
G, whatever it is you have between your ears, it ain't workin', boy.

Note that people are posting information from scientific articles. And all that you are doing is displaying the depths of your ignorance.

Yes, BLAH BLAH, science BLAH BLAH, end of the world, BLAH BLAH , MY fault blah blah......

Its okay man I get it. If they turn acidic its AGW, if they don't its AGW, yep just like it went from warming to clmate change when the temps went and cooled for a bit... LOL you people crack me up man..:lol:
 
Of course this is just more science, something that Gstring hates because he is incapable of understanding it.

http://www.ucar.edu/communications/Final_acidification.pdf

Research findings of the past decade have led to mounting concern that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will cause changes in the ocean’s carbonate chemistry system, and that those changes will affect some of the most fundamental biological and geochemical processes of the sea. Thanks to the efforts of large-scale physical and biogeochemical ocean programs such as WOCE, JGOFS, and OACES, ocean-wide changes in the carbonate system are now well documented. Since 1980 ocean uptake of the excess CO2 released by anthropogenic activities is significant; about a third
has been stored in the oceans. The rate of atmospheric CO2 increase, however, far exceeds the rate
at which natural feedbacks can restore the system to normal conditions. Oceanic uptake of CO2 drives
the carbonate system to lower pH and lower saturation states of the carbonate minerals calcite, aragonite, and high-magnesium calcite, the materials used to form supporting skeletal structures in many major groups of marine organisms.
 
G, whatever it is you have between your ears, it ain't workin', boy.

Note that people are posting information from scientific articles. And all that you are doing is displaying the depths of your ignorance.

Yes, BLAH BLAH, science BLAH BLAH, end of the world, BLAH BLAH , MY fault blah blah......

Its okay man I get it. If they turn acidic its AGW, if they don't its AGW, yep just like it went from warming to clmate change when the temps went and cooled for a bit... LOL you people crack me up man..:lol:

Where did you pick up that piece of BS(inbold)? Got a cite for that? I'm not impressed with your analyses of the situation, since they're obviously political, given that no proponent of AGW would ever say something that stupid. That's just an indication that we either have rampant ignorance on the skeptic/denier side or some just don't care what they say, as long as it fits their political bias.
 
Of course this is just more science, something that Gstring hates because he is incapable of understanding it.

http://www.ucar.edu/communications/Final_acidification.pdf

Research findings of the past decade have led to mounting concern that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will cause changes in the ocean’s carbonate chemistry system, and that those changes will affect some of the most fundamental biological and geochemical processes of the sea. Thanks to the efforts of large-scale physical and biogeochemical ocean programs such as WOCE, JGOFS, and OACES, ocean-wide changes in the carbonate system are now well documented. Since 1980 ocean uptake of the excess CO2 released by anthropogenic activities is significant; about a third
has been stored in the oceans. The rate of atmospheric CO2 increase, however, far exceeds the rate
at which natural feedbacks can restore the system to normal conditions. Oceanic uptake of CO2 drives
the carbonate system to lower pH and lower saturation states of the carbonate minerals calcite, aragonite, and high-magnesium calcite, the materials used to form supporting skeletal structures in many major groups of marine organisms.

Yes, more science from the scientists who said the oceans are gonna turn acidic due to agw and now claim they aren't but thats bad too... LOL Please bring more science from these men who are just best-guessing anyway...:lol:
 

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