The Deep Ocean's Carbon Exhaust.

The deep ocean releases large amounts of old, pre-industrial carbon dioxide (CO) to the atmosphere through upwelling in the Southern Ocean, which counters the marine carbon uptake occurring elsewhere. This Southern Ocean CO release is relevant to the global climate because its changes could alter atmospheric CO levels on long time scales, and also affects the present-day potential of the Southern Ocean to take up anthropogenic CO. Here, year-round profiling float measurements show that this CO release arises from a zonal band of upwelling waters between the Subantarctic Front and wintertime sea-ice edge. This band of high CO subsurface water coincides with the outcropping of the 27.8 kg m isoneutral density surface that characterizes Indo-Pacific Deep Water (IPDW). It has a potential partial pressure of CO exceeding current atmospheric CO levels (∆PCO) by 175 ± 32 μatm. Ship-based measurements reveal that IPDW exhibits a distinct ∆PCO maximum in the ocean, which is set by remineralization of organic carbon and originates from the northern Pacific and Indian Ocean basins. Below this IPDW layer, the carbon content increases downwards, whereas ∆PCO decreases. Most of this vertical ∆PCO decline results from decreasing temperatures and increasing alkalinity due to an increased fraction of calcium carbonate dissolution. These two factors limit the CO outgassing from the high-carbon content deep waters on more southerly surface outcrops. Our results imply that the response of Southern Ocean CO fluxes to possible future changes in upwelling are sensitive to the subsurface carbon chemistry set by the vertical remineralization and dissolution profiles.