Premium
Diurnal variations of surface ocean p CO 2 and sea‐air CO 2 flux evaluated using remotely sensed data
Author(s) -
Olsen Are,
Omar Abdirahman M.,
StuartMenteth Alice C.,
Triñanes Joaquin A.
Publication year - 2004
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 - 10.1029/2004gl020583
Subject(s) - environmental science , diurnal cycle , flux (metallurgy) , wind speed , diurnal temperature variation , atmospheric sciences , climatology , sea surface temperature , atmosphere (unit) , daytime , meteorology , geology , geography , materials science , metallurgy
This paper evaluates the effect of diurnal variations of sea surface temperature (SST) and wind speed on the surface ocean CO 2 partial pressure ( p CO 2 sw ) and sea‐air CO 2 flux. This is carried out using a combination of climatological and remote sensing data. The calculations show that the diurnal heating cycle can drive a diurnal p CO 2 sw variability which may cause the global ocean uptake of CO 2 to be more than twice as large during night than during day. The effect of diurnal wind speed variations on the sea‐air CO 2 flux is restricted to the tropics. The concurrent variations of SST and wind speed on diurnal time scales bring around covariance terms that may contribute to the monthly mean flux. These were estimated and found to be negligible. Thus, this study validates the use of diurnally averaged fields for computation of sea‐air CO 2 fluxes.