School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.
Science. 2009 Dec 4;326(5958):1391-3. doi: 10.1126/science.1177394.
The oceans are a major sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Historically, observations have been too sparse to allow accurate tracking of changes in rates of CO2 uptake over ocean basins, so little is known about how these vary. Here, we show observations indicating substantial variability in the CO2 uptake by the North Atlantic on time scales of a few years. Further, we use measurements from a coordinated network of instrumented commercial ships to define the annual flux into the North Atlantic, for the year 2005, to a precision of about 10%. This approach offers the prospect of accurately monitoring the changing ocean CO2 sink for those ocean basins that are well covered by shipping routes.
海洋是大气二氧化碳（CO2）的主要吸收汇。历史上，由于观测过于稀疏，无法准确跟踪海洋盆地 CO2 吸收速率的变化，因此对这些变化的了解甚少。在这里，我们展示了表明北大西洋 CO2 吸收存在大量可变性的观测结果，其时间尺度为几年。此外，我们还使用来自配备仪器的商业船舶协调网络的测量结果，以约 10%的精度定义了 2005 年进入北大西洋的年通量。这种方法为那些航运路线覆盖良好的海洋盆地提供了准确监测不断变化的海洋 CO2 汇的前景。
