Identification

Title

Recent evidence for a strengthening COâ‚‚ sink in the Southern Ocean from carbonate system measurements in the Drake Passage (2002-2015)

Abstract

We present a 13 year (2002-2015) semimonthly time series of the partial pressure of CO₂ in surface water (pCO₂surf) and other carbonate system parameters from the Drake Passage. This record shows a clear increase in the magnitude of the sea-air pCO₂ gradient, indicating strengthening of the CO₂ sink in agreement with recent large-scale analyses of the world oceans. The rate of increase in pCO₂surf north of the Antarctic Polar Front (APF) is similar to the atmospheric pCO₂ (pCO₂atm) trend, whereas the pCO₂surf increase south of the APF is slower than the pCO₂atm trend. The high-frequency surface observations indicate that an absence of a winter increase in total CO₂ (TCO₂) and cooling summer sea surface temperatures are largely responsible for increasing CO₂ uptake south of the APF. Muted winter trends in surface TCO₂ also provide temporary stability to the carbonate system that is already close to undersaturation with respect to aragonite.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7cf9rfc

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-09-28T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2015 American Geophysical Union.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-12-26T03:02:23.052362

Metadata language