Southern Ocean's carbon mopping role reduced

The world's oceans work as powerful air purifiers by mopping up as much as 70-80% of the air pollutants produced worldwide due to industrial activities. A study published in this week's issue of Science reveals that the Southern ocean sink's ability to soak up carbon dioxide has reduced significantly.

The collaborative research team led by Dr Corinne Le Quéré involved the University of East Anglia, the British Antarctic Survey, and Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry. The team looked at carbon dioxide levels absorbed and released by the ocean at 11 monitoring spots in Antarctica and on islands in the Southern Ocean.

The researchers found that between 1981 and now, the ability of the oceans to serve as carbon dioxide absorbing sinks has been gradually reducing with a yearly reduction working out to as much as 0.08 gigatonnes. That's pretty significant when you observe that the world's oceans store upto as much as 0.1 to 0.6 gigatonnes of carbon annually.

Source: Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO2 Sink Due to Recent Climate Change
Corinne Le Quéré, Christian Rödenbeck, Erik T. Buitenhuis, Thomas J. Conway, Ray Langenfelds, Antony Gomez, Casper Labuschagne, Michel Ramonet, Takakiyo Nakazawa, Nicolas Metzl, Nathan Gillett, and Martin HeimannPublished online 17 May 2007 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1136188] (in Science Express Reports)