Rickels, Wilfried, Karstensen, Johannes , Meier, Felix, Peterson, Sonja, Ruehland, Sina, Thube, Sneha, Grasse, Patricia , Quaas, Martin, Posern, Conny, Vafeidis, Athanasios and Wolff, Claudia (Submitted) Valuing the ocean carbon sink at the country level. Research Square preprint deposition service . DOI 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3232579/v1.

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Abstract

The ocean carbon sink annually removes about a third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, reducing climate change damage and CO2 abatement costs. While land sinks have been integrated into climate policies, the ocean sink has not—for good reason, since the former stores carbon within the boundaries of a given country, while the latter removes carbon from the atmosphere as global commons. However, the question of the value of the oceanic carbon sink remains, and how it should be attributed when comparing a coastal country with a large exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to a landlocked country. Here, we demonstrate different approaches to valuing the ocean carbon sink, comparing a climate-change-damage-based approach with an abatement-based and market-based approach. We use a high-resolution carbon flux dataset (0.25x0.25 degrees) to estimate the oceanic carbon sinks and sources in coastal areas. We assign a net sink of 1.72 GtC proportional to countries with negative carbon fluxes in their EEZs. In our calculation, the annual value of the global ocean sink ranges from 66 B USD to 1432 B USD.

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