Sabine, Christopher L., Feely, Richard A., Gruber, Nicolas, Key, Robert M., Lee, Kitack, Bullister, John L., Wanninkhof, Rik, Wong, C.S., Wallace, Douglas W.R., Tilbrook, Bronte, Millero, Frank J., Peng, Tsung-Hung, Kozyr, Alexander, Ono, Tsueno and Rios, Aida F. (2004) The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO₂. Science, 305 . pp. 367-371. DOI 10.1126/science.1097403.

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Abstract

Using inorganic carbon measurements from an international survey effort in the 1990s and a tracer-based separation technique, we estimate a global oceanic anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) sink for the period from 1800 to 1994 of 118 ± 19 petagrams of carbon. The oceanic sink accounts for ∼48% of the total fossil-fuel and cement-manufacturing emissions, implying that the terrestrial biosphere was a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere of about 39 ± 28 petagrams of carbon for this period. The current fraction of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions stored in the ocean appears to be about one-third of the long-term potential.

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