Developing an Early Warning System for Climate Change
A global team of researchers led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) has produced a new technique of assessing the absorption of CO2 by the oceans and mapped out for the first time CO2 uptake for the entire North Atlantic. The process could lead to the development of an ‘early-warning system’ to notice any weakening of the ocean sinks – seen by some scientists as the first signal of more marked global climate change.
This research will greatly improve interpretation of the natural ocean ’sinks’ and enable more exact anticipations about how the worldwide climate is altering. Led by Prof Andrew Watson of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, the researchers used a network of commercial ships carrying chemical sensors in their engine rooms — combined with other information such as satellite observations of sea surface temperature — to map the uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the entire North Atlantic Ocean.
The results suggest that the North Atlantic absorption of CO2 varies considerably over periods of several years and is sensitive to regional changes in climate. “These exciting results from our new interconnected network represent the first time researchers have ascertained CO2 uptake over any large region of the world – either land or ocean – with such accuracy,” said Prof Watson.
This new method approximates the flux and how it varies from year to year and season to season, showing patterns of uptake with a detail never before realized.
It is hoped that similar networks could be accomplished in other major ocean basins well-covered by shipping, making it possible to detect carbon consumption over most of the world’s oceans. The networks could be used to give early warning of any weakening in the uptake of carbon dioxide by the global oceans. This uptake is very important in slowing the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, and some scientists have warned that such a weakening of the sink could be beginning to occur as global climate change becomes more noticeable.
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