Continental shelves as a variable but increasing global sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide

Goulven G. Laruelle (), Wei-Jun Cai, Xinping Hu, Nicolas Gruber, Fred T. Mackenzie and Pierre Regnier
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Goulven G. Laruelle: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Wei-Jun Cai: University of Delaware
Xinping Hu: Texas A&M University—Corpus Christi
Nicolas Gruber: ETH Zurich
Fred T. Mackenzie: University of Hawaii at Manoa
Pierre Regnier: Université Libre de Bruxelles

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract It has been speculated that the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) in shelf waters may lag the rise in atmospheric CO2. Here, we show that this is the case across many shelf regions, implying a tendency for enhanced shelf uptake of atmospheric CO2. This result is based on analysis of long-term trends in the air–sea pCO2 gradient (ΔpCO2) using a global surface ocean pCO2 database spanning a period of up to 35 years. Using wintertime data only, we find that ΔpCO2 increased in 653 of the 825 0.5° cells for which a trend could be calculated, with 325 of these cells showing a significant increase in excess of +0.5 μatm yr−1 (p

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02738-z

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