Antarctic Ocean is already saturated with CO2

The phenomenon wasn't expected to be apparent for decades: The Antarctic Southern Ocean is already CO2 saturated. This vast area accounts for 15% of the earth's natural CO2 carbon sink. With this pot full, it changes the prognosis for how fast the poles will melt.

www.cnn.com...

Last year scientists were hoping that the Southern Ocean would still absorb another 20%:

www.sciencedaily.com...

This corresponds to the earlier report last week from NASA stating that an area the size of California had already melted in the Antarctic.



[edit on 17-5-2007 by Avastar]

[edit on 17-5-2007 by Avastar]

Cheers for this, quite interesting. If these findings are confirmed, it doesn't bode well for the future.

I hate to say it but I fear the ecosystem is gonna collapse
in a dramatic way, across the oceans.
manmade posions, bottom tralling, climate change (does not matter why, we need to change fuel source either way, so its an argument about an elephant in the room.)
its gonna have a critical mass.
I fear the worst...I pray for the best.
not my usually cheery post.
sorry... I think the enviorment and the animals, insects are almost strained beyond belief.

Any of you drink water thats untreated>>>>
No, not one of you
what are the animals drinking
I hate mans greed and lack of care or concern for the enviorment.
sorry I had to rant.
Lord of the Jungle needs to defend his home.
Back to topic....bad news

Originally posted by melatonin
Cheers for this, quite interesting. If these findings are confirmed, it doesn't bode well for the future.

Since when do you accept any information from "non-peer reviewed articles"?...

CNN is not exactly "peer reviewed heaven"...

Originally posted by Muaddib
Since when do you accept any information from "non-peer reviewed articles"?...

CNN is not exactly "peer reviewed heaven"...

It states that the research is published in Science, probably this weeks issue.

Originally posted by melatonin

It states that the research is published in Science, probably this weeks issue.

It is obvious you only accept "non-peer reviewed" articles when it suits your purpose...

Anyways, this contradicts a previous article from a "more reliable source" about the Pacific Ocean intensifying it's release of CO2.

People do have to remember "the oceans are linked", so if there is any "saturation of CO2", that would mean all Oceans are saturated, but that is not the case... Remember there is such a thing as a "Global conveyor belt", so the CO2 should be spread out throughout the oceans by these global currents.

RELEASE OF CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC OCEAN
INTENSIFIED DURING THE 1990S
.............................
“The results of our study show that the intensity of CO2 release from the western equatorial Pacific has increased during the past decade. By 2001, this reduced the global ocean uptake – about 2 billion tons of carbon a year – by about 2.5 percent, ” said Takahashi who directed the study that provides a clearer picture of the importance of PDO events on the Earth’s carbon cycle. “This is on top of the CO2 emission and absorption fluctuations seen between El Niño and La Niña years, which occur on shorter timescales.”

www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov...

The Southern Ocean would absorb more CO2 since it is much colder than the Pacific, as for a "saturation threshold being reached, i would like to see how they came to this conclusion.

Not to mention the fact that even a "doubling of CO2" in Earth's atmosphere has been proven to only increase temperatures by 0.014 C...

[edit on 17-5-2007 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
It is obvious you only accept "non-peer reviewed" articles when it suits your purpose...

Eh? It is peer-reviewed research.

Anyways, this contradicts a previous article from a "more reliable source" about the Pacific Ocean intensifying it's release of CO2.

No contradiction.

I'd like to know how you come to the conclusion that the research you have quoted, published in Science, is more reliable than this new study, published in Science?

[edit on 17-5-2007 by melatonin]

Originally posted by melatonin

No contradiction.

I'd like to know how you come to the conclusion that the research you have quoted, published in Science, is more reliable than this new study, published in Science?

They are not presenting the whole picture in that article, while one area absorbs CO2 because of the low temperatures of the oceans around that area, in other areas CO2 is being released because temperatures had increased.

As for how is the article i linked more reliable, simply because CNN is not a "peer-reviewed site".... We don't know if what the CNN article says is true, nor do we know all the facts since CNN does not even give a link to it.

And last but no least you always claim "only peer reviewed sites are to be believed' yet you obviously want to believe this news article.....

[edit on 17-5-2007 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
As for how is the article i linked more reliable, simply because CNN is not a "peer-reviewed site".... We don't know if what the CNN article says is true, nor do we know all the facts since CNN does not even give a link to it.

And last but no least you always claim "only peer reviewed sites are to be believed' yet you obviously want to believe this news article.....

Not at all, the research is in this weeks Science. If you spent 5 minutes checking this stuff out, you'd be better off.

Published Online May 17, 2007
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1136188
Science Express Index

Reports
Submitted on October 11, 2006
Accepted on May 2, 2007

Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO2 Sink Due to Recent Climate Change

Corinne Le Quéré 1*, Christian Rödenbeck 2, Erik T. Buitenhuis 3, Thomas J. Conway 4, Ray Langenfelds 5, Antony Gomez 6, Casper Labuschagne 7, Michel Ramonet 8, Takakiyo Nakazawa 9, Nicolas Metzl 10, Nathan Gillett 11, Martin Heimann 2
1 Max Planck Institut fur Biogeochemie, Postfach 100164, D-07701 Jena, Germany; University of East Anglia, Norwich, and the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK.
2 Max Planck Institut fur Biogeochemie, Postfach 100164, D-07701 Jena, Germany.
3 Max Planck Institut fur Biogeochemie, Postfach 100164, D-07701 Jena, Germany; Present address: University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
4 Climate Monitoring & Diagnostics Laboratory (NOAA/CMDL), Boulder, USA.
5 CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Australia.
6 National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Wellington, NZ.
7 South African Weather Service (SAWS), Stellenbosch, South Africa.
8 Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement/Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (LSCE/IPSL), Gif, France.
9 Center for Atmospheric and Oceanic Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
10 LOCEAN, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, CNRS, Univ. P. and M. Curie, Paris, France.
11 Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Corinne Le Quéré , E-mail: [email protected]

Based on observed atmospheric CO2 concentration and an inverse method, we estimate that the Southern Ocean sink of CO2 has weakened between 1981 and 2004 by 0.08 PgC/y per decade relative to the trend expected from the large increase in atmospheric CO2. This weakening is attributed to the observed increase in Southern Ocean winds resulting from human activities and projected to continue in the future. Consequences include a reduction in the efficiency of the Southern Ocean sink of CO2 in the short term (~25 years) and possibly a higher level of stabilization of atmospheric CO2 on a multicentury time scale.

www.sciencemag.org...

[edit on 17-5-2007 by melatonin]

Saline soda pop?

Looks like it is time to do so some research on the thermodynamics of saturated salt water... This could be interesting.

But I'll will wait until confirmation. One study, peer-reviewed or not, does not make a scientific fact.

Originally posted by melatonin
..............
Not at all, the research is in this weeks Science. If you spent 5 minutes checking this stuff out, you'd be better off.
.............

If you would spend 15 minutes reading all the other research which you want to ignore because for some reason you want to believe that "mankind is to blame for the current warming", you might see that first of all, the increase of CO2 is not what caused the current warming, and second of all the oceans hold 98.5% of all the ocean-atmospheric CO2 which exists. But for some reason there are some scientists, and people, who want to believe that an increase of 0.01% of CO2, as total gases that exist on Earth, which has occurred over a period of 150 -200 years is the reason why the Earth is going through the current warming cycle.

People like you want to ignore that the Sun's output and the sunspot numbers have increased during the 20th century more than for thousands of years.

You want to ignore that the Earth's magnetic field is weaker now, which started to get weaker since 1845...coincidence that this is the time when most of the problems began, than it has been for the past 780,000 years.

For some reason people like yourself want to ignore the fact that the Earth is not the only planet going through Climate Changes.

Oh, but it is the evil anthropogenic CO2 which is to blame, it doesn't matter if experiments show that even a doubling of CO2 would only increase temperatures by 0.014C, and of course who cares if temperatures began increasing 260 years before CO2 levels even began to increase.

[edit on 17-5-2007 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
Oh, but it is the evil anthropogenic CO2 which is to blame, it doesn't matter if experiments show that even a doubling of CO2 would only increase temperatures by 0.014C, and of course who cares if temperatures began increasing 260 years before CO2 levels even began to increase.

We've been through all this stuff before, muaddib. You are either completely misrepresenting research, have no research, misunderstand research, or generally do not understand what your claims entail.

For example, this is probably the 5th time I've had to point out the 0.014'C figure is taken from a study that only focuses on one single environment and cannot be extrapolated to global effects. But, of course, you will have no qualms in continuing to spread misleading disinformation.

However, I digress. Is there anything interesting you have to add about this new research that suggests one of the important CO2 sinks is becoming less efficient, which could well lead to even more anthropogenic CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere?

[edit on 18-5-2007 by melatonin]

I do not doubt that the earth is being changed by man and some of the data could be misinterpreted.

Originally posted by Muaddib
... the sunspot numbers have increased during the 20th century more than for thousands of years.

How can someone be sure what sun spot activity was thousands of years ago?

Folks, I'm not sure why this thread has turned into a ranting argument about man-made or natural global warming, but it's NOT important. All I am doing here is pointing out that things in our environment are changing VERY fast ... regardless of how.

My issue is one of DENIAL, not the whys. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the writing on the wall in this forum ... we are facing a collapse of the world-as-we-know-it, and it is happening right before our very eyes. Yes, I AM an alarmist. But the proof is mounting everyday that we are over the tipping point and there is nothing we can do about it. I'm just posting that news as it becomes available ...

My Opinion:
Historians will be able to look back and say it was this, or it was that, which ended this civilization. But for us in the midst of it all that matters now is our survival. Now, I invite you to start planning what you want the NEXT civilization to look like.

I say that everytime I see a post about weather and systems change
lets face it gas is bad business...and we need to develop a reliable alternative life style and renewable energy grids...
but to argue man made vs not man made vs its probable both are really just argueing about the elephant in the room
thanks for say so, I just wanted to say the same
We are living in denial if we need to debate the elephant

BBC on the same Science article

(Better than the CNN link)

news.bbc.co.uk...

Originally posted by melatonin

We've been through all this stuff before, muaddib. You are either completely misrepresenting research, have no research, misunderstand research, or generally do not understand what your claims entail.
...............
However, I digress. Is there anything interesting you have to add about this new research that suggests one of the important CO2 sinks is becoming less efficient, which could well lead to even more anthropogenic CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere?

And i have responded with dozens of other research which shows you are misrepresenting, exagerating, and even lying just because you want to agree with Mann and associates and want to blame mankind...

I already gave my input on this subject. The oceans are not going to become "less efficient" simply because the oceans have been the mayor regulators of CO2 on Earth and Earth has had more CO2 in it's atmosphere than now.

All of the CO2, even anthropogenic CO2, comes Earth, it has existed for billions of years and will be part of a cycle in which sometimes there will be higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and at other times there will be less.

Anthropogenic CO2 is not being "produced out of nothing", and as the several dozen research papers i have shown which shows that you are wrong, there have been warmer times in our past 2,000 years yet CO2 levels were lower.

CO2 does not cause the warming people like yourself are trying to make the world believe it does.

You like to believe Mann and associates, even though they have lied in the past and have even tried to hide evidence of past Climate Change events, I rather believe the other data and research which says the contrary to every one of your claims.

[edit on 18-5-2007 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by junglelord
...............
but to argue man made vs not man made vs its probable both are really just argueing about the elephant in the room
thanks for say so, I just wanted to say the same
We are living in denial if we need to debate the elephant

The problem is that the "Let's blame mankind crowd' want to keep spending billions of dollars on debate and "trying to stop Climate Change/Global Warming.

No amount of money is going to mitigate or stop Climate Change/Global Warming, i have said in the past that money should be spent on contingencies that will help us survive the changes that are coming and not on bickering.

But the "Let's blame mankind crowd" always comes back trying to spend more money on their delusion that they can stop or mitigate Climate Change.

[edit on 18-5-2007 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
[edit on 18-5-2007 by Muaddib]

In an attempt to keep this thread on topic, rather than filling it full of chaff, I've answered you here.

Originally posted by melatonin


In an attempt to keep this thread on topic, rather than filling it full of chaff, I've answered you here.

Well, if you want to keep the "chaff" out of this thread, or any thread you should stop posting then melatonin, or should i say "regenmacher"?

[edit on 20-5-2007 by Muaddib]