The key to understanding the stability of the Southern Ocean carbon sink turned out to be winds. (click here) Since the early 1980s, winds circling Antarctica steadily increased, driven by both global warming and changes in the upper atmosphere caused by the ozone hole. (Graph by Robert Simmon, based on National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)
The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in ocean water (y axis) depends on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (shaded curves) and the temperature of the water (x axis) (click title to entry - thank you). This simplified graph shows that as atmospheric CO2 increases from pre-industrial levels (blue) to double (2X) the pre-industrial amounts (light green), the ocean CO2 concentration increases as well. However, as water temperature increases, its ability dissolve CO2 decreases. Global warming is expected to reduce the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2, leaving more in the atmosphere…which will lead to even higher temperatures. (Graph by Robert Simmon.)
Earth's carbon sinks are filling. The Southern Ocean is actually discharging CO2 due increased turbulence of the ocean waters caused by warming and an unexpected correlation to the depletion of ozone.
By the way...with surface ocean turbulence picking up, and the lower currents begining to increase their mixing as 'transmitted' by the upper ocean movement, that eliminates carbon sequestration in the deep ocean. I never, ever believed it was a viable solution.
Ozone hole has unforeseen effect on ocean carbon sink (click here)
12:54 26 June 2009 by Kate Ravilious
The Southern Ocean has lost its appetite for carbon dioxide, and now it appears that the ozone hole could be to blame.
In theory, oceans should absorb more CO2 as levels of the gas in the atmosphere rise. Measurements show that this is happening in most ocean regions, but strangely not in the Southern Ocean, where carbon absorption has flattened off. Climate models fail to reproduce this puzzling pattern.
The Southern Ocean is a major carbon sink, guzzling around 15 per cent of CO2 emissions. However, between 1987 and 2004, carbon uptake in the region was reduced by nearly 2.5 billion tonnes – equivalent to the amount of carbon that all the world's oceans absorb in one year....
...By running their model with and without the ozone depletion since 1975, Lenton and his colleagues were able to show that the ozone hole is responsible for the Southern Ocean's carbon saturation.
The effect could be down to the way decreasing stratospheric ozone and rising greenhouse gases are altering the radiation balance of the Earth's atmosphere. This has been predicted to alter and strengthen the westerly winds that blow over the Southern Ocean.
"We expected this transition to a windier regime, but it has occurred much earlier than we thought, seemingly because of the ozone hole," says Lenton....
It never ceases to amaze me the narcisstic priorities of the Right Wing Republican pundits. I heard a radio program where the 'commentator' did nothing but complain about the provisions in the "Cap and Trade" program passed by the House, in which when a home sells there needs to be roof replacements with solar reflective shingles. All he could do was complain about the price of roofs. Never once did he accept ownership of the problem of Human Induced Global Warming or the abuses of the air we breath that also comprises our troposphere. That is amazing to me. All they can think about is, "Me, me, me."
When my sons were very young they had the original Mario Brothers Game. The little man that would bounce up and down made this noise. It sounded like the word, "Mine, mine, mine, mine" everytime he would make another jump. I think these Right Wing Commentators were influenced by subliminal suggest as children as they were abandoned to the technology by parents releaved to have them occupied.
