Terhaar, Jens; Frölicher, Thomas; Joos, Fortunat (2021). Southern Ocean anthropogenic carbon sink constrained by sea surface salinity. Science Advances, 7(18), pp. 1-10. American Association for the Advancement of Science 10.1126/sciadv.abd5964
|
Text
terhaar21sciadv_eabd5964.full.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial (CC-BY-NC). Download (935kB) | Preview |
The ocean attenuates global warming by taking up about one quarter of global anthropogenic carbon emissions. Around 40% of this carbon sink is located in the Southern Ocean. However, Earth system models struggle to reproduce the Southern Ocean circulation and carbon fluxes. We identify a tight relationship across two multimodel ensembles between present-day sea surface salinity in the subtropical-polar frontal zone and the anthropogenic carbon sink in the Southern Ocean. Observations and model results constrain the cumulative Southern Ocean sink over 1850-2100 to 158 ± 6 petagrams of carbon under the low-emissions scenario Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 1-2.6 (SSP1-2.6) and to 279 ± 14 petagrams of carbon under the high-emissions scenario SSP5-8.5. The constrained anthropogenic carbon sink is 14 to 18% larger and 46 to 54% less uncertain than estimated by the unconstrained estimates. The identified constraint demonstrates the importance of the freshwater cycle for the Southern Ocean circulation and carbon cycle.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
---|---|
Division/Institute: |
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Climate and Environmental Physics 10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR) |
UniBE Contributor: |
Terhaar, Jens, Frölicher, Thomas, Joos, Fortunat |
Subjects: |
500 Science > 530 Physics |
ISSN: |
2375-2548 |
Publisher: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Fortunat Joos |
Date Deposited: |
17 May 2021 15:20 |
Last Modified: |
19 Dec 2022 11:51 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1126/sciadv.abd5964 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/156125 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/156125 |