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Southern Ocean carbon trends: Sensitivity to methods
Author(s) -
Fay Amanda R.,
McKinley Galen A.,
Lovenduski Nicole S.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2014gl061324
Subject(s) - environmental science , carbon sink , sink (geography) , carbon flux , climatology , carbon dioxide , carbon fibers , carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere , oceanography , climate change , geology , geography , computer science , cartography , ecology , algorithm , ecosystem , composite number , biology
The Southern Ocean is highly under‐sampled with respect to variables needed to assess trends in air‐sea carbon dioxide fluxes. Multiple investigators have made use of sparse measurements of surface ocean partial pressure of CO 2 (pCO 2 ), but there remains a lack of consensus as to recent trends in the carbon sink here. We analyze impacts of specific methodological choices on pCO 2 trends, with a focus on regional binning, time series length, and spatial biases. We find the most robust approach to include binning based on geographic areas, the removal of spatial gradients in climatological pCO 2 , the use of annual‐average data, and the consideration of trends across multiple combinations of start and end years. Applying this approach, we find that Southern Ocean carbon uptake slowed from about 1990 to 2006 and subsequently strengthened from 2007 to 2010. More data are needed to reduce uncertainties and increase our ability to diagnose change in the carbon sink.