Winter weather controls net influx of atmospheric CO2 on the northwest European shelf
Type | Article | ||||||||||||
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Date | 2019-12 | ||||||||||||
Language | English | ||||||||||||
Author(s) | Kitidis Vassilis1, Shutler Jamie D.2, Ashton Ian2, Warren Mark1, Brown Ian1, Findlay Helen1, Hartman Sue E.3, Sanders Richard3, Humphreys Matthew![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Affiliation(s) | 1 : Plymouth Marine Lab, Plymouth, Devon, England. 2 : Univ Exeter, Coll Life & Environm Sci, Exeter, Devon, England. 3 : Natl Oceanog Ctr, Southampton, Hants, England. 4 : Univ Southampton, Ocean & Earth Sci, Southampton, Hants, England. 5 : Cefas, Lowestoft, Suffolk, England. 6 : Natl Univ Ireland, Galway, Ireland. 7 : Agrifood & Biosci Inst, Belfast, Antrim, North Ireland. 8 : MSS, Aberdeen, Scotland. 9 : Marine Inst, Galway, Ireland. 10 : UMR CNRS UPMC 7144 Equipe Chim Marine, Stn Biol Roscoff, Roscoff, France. 11 : Univ Groningen, Fac Sci & Engn, Groningen, Netherlands. 12 : Alfred Wegener Inst, Helmholtz Ctr Polar & Marine Res, Bremerhaven, Germany. 13 : Univ Bergen, Inst Geophys, Bergen, Norway. 14 : Bjerknes Ctr Climate Res, Bergen, Norway. 15 : Bjerknes Ctr Climate Res, NORCE Norwegian Res Ctr, Bergen, Norway. 16 : GEOMAR Helmholtz Ctr Ocean Res Kiel, Kiel, Germany. 17 : Univ Paris 06, UPMC, Sorbonne Univ, IRD,CNRS,MNHN,LOCEAN, Paris, France. 18 : IRD, Ctr Bretagne, Plouzane, France. 19 : VLIZ Flanders Marine Inst, Oostende, Belgium. 20 : Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht, Ctr Mat & Coastal Res, Geesthacht, Germany. 21 : IFREMER, F-29280 Plouzane, France. 22 : Univ Liverpool, Sch Environm Sci, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. 23 : Univ East Anglia, Sch Environm Sci, Norwich, Norfolk, England. |
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Source | Scientific Reports (2045-2322) (Nature Publishing Group), 2019-12 , Vol. 9 , N. 20153 , P. 11p. | ||||||||||||
DOI | 10.1038/s41598-019-56363-5 | ||||||||||||
WOS© Times Cited | 18 | ||||||||||||
Abstract | Shelf seas play an important role in the global carbon cycle, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and exporting carbon (C) to the open ocean and sediments. The magnitude of these processes is poorly constrained, because observations are typically interpolated over multiple years. Here, we used 298500 observations of CO2 fugacity (fCO(2)) from a single year (2015), to estimate the net influx of atmospheric CO2 as 26.2 +/- 4.7 Tg C yr(-1) over the open NW European shelf. CO2 influx from the atmosphere was dominated by influx during winter as a consequence of high winds, despite a smaller, thermally-driven, air-sea fCO(2) gradient compared to the larger, biologically-driven summer gradient. In order to understand this climate regulation service, we constructed a carbon-budget supplemented by data from the literature, where the NW European shelf is treated as a box with carbon entering and leaving the box. This budget showed that net C-burial was a small sink of 1.3 +/- 3.1 Tg C yr(-1), while CO2 efflux from estuaries to the atmosphere, removed the majority of river C-inputs. In contrast, the input from the Baltic Sea likely contributes to net export via the continental shelf pump and advection (34.4 +/- 6.0 Tg C yr(-1)). | ||||||||||||
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