[John Mason]

Here's the press release from the UEA. The Schuster & Watson paper's abstract is not yet available online.

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22/10/2007
North Atlantic slows on the uptake of CO2 Further evidence for the decline of the oceans' historical role as an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide is supplied by new research by environmental scientists from the University of East Anglia.

Since the industrial revolution, much of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere has been taken up by the world’s oceans which act as a strong ‘sink’ for the emissions.

This has slowed climate change. Without this uptake, CO2 levels would have risen much faster and the climate would be warming more rapidly.

A paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research by Dr Ute Schuster and Professor Andrew Watson of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences again raises concerns that the oceans might be slowing their uptake of CO2.

Results of their decade-long study in the North Atlantic show that the uptake in this ocean, which is the most intense sink for atmospheric CO2, slowed down dramatically between the mid-nineties and the early 2000s.

A slowdown in the sink in the Southern Ocean has already been inferred, but the change in the North Atlantic is greater and more sudden, and could be responsible for a substantial proportion of the observed weakening.

The observations were made from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments for measuring carbon dioxide in the water. Much of the data has come from a container ship carrying bananas from the West Indies to the UK, making a round-trip of the Atlantic every month. The MV Santa Maria, chartered by Geest, has generated more than 90,000 measurements of CO2 in the past few years.

The results show that the uptake by the North Atlantic halved between the mid-90s, when data was first gathered, and 2002-05.

“Such large changes are a tremendous surprise. We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean’s great mass,” said Dr Schuster.

“We are cautious about attributing this exclusively to human-caused climate change because this uptake has never been measured before, so we have no baseline to compare our results to. Perhaps the ocean uptake is subject to natural ups and downs and it will recover again.”

But the direction of the change was worrying, she added, and there were some grounds for believing that a ‘saturation’ of the ocean sink would start to occur.

“The speed and size of the change show that we cannot take for granted the ocean sink for the carbon dioxide. Perhaps this is partly a natural oscillation or perhaps it is a response to the recent rapid climate warming. In either case we now know that the sink can change quickly and we need to continue to monitor the ocean uptake,” said Prof Watson.

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It shows that this is something they've not studied in depth so far and these initial results are perplexing. More research is clearly required before any firm conclusions can be drawn either way.

Over & out - John 

[Peter H]

Quote

Village - 24/10/2007 14:54 In fact the only thing here in the report that should be worrying the Pro Global warming lobby is this; "The speed and size of the change show that we cannot take for granted the ocean sink for the carbon dioxide. " That one statement blows the whole global warming theory right out of the water , because the theory is based on the fact that the environment cant deal with our 3% share of the total CO2 added every year to the atmosphere. Now we know that there are quite wild and unexpected changes in the take up of CO2 in the natural environment then how on earth can the pro global warming lobby make anymore wild and inaccurate predictions of our future climate and be taken seriously?

The crucial word in your post Vill is 'added'. Think about it ;)  

 

 

 

[JohnF]

Vil the quote from the UEA that John Mason posted clearly states the opinion of the scientists.

The press have blown up this story way ahead of what any of the scientists actually saying. Now whilst you may be screaming blue murder at the BBC this story was first reported in newspapers such as "The Scotsman" and as is usually the case gone round the media in a form of Chinese whispers.

Poor reporting.

The science is quite clear. Judge the issue of ACC on the science not media reporting. 

JohnF 

[Andy Mayhew]

Quote

Village - 24/10/2007 14:10

Do you still now believe that the global climate has been driven by a change in one sea area of one sea in one decade?

[dunno]     

Where'd you come up with that idea from Vill?  

Although, now you mention it, I pretty sure it's right: global climate has been driven by a change in one sea area in one decade.

ref: Younger Dryas and 8.2kya Event  ;)   

 

(Sorry to go off topic)   

 

[Mark Drasdo]

A review of the current position following this year's record melt in the Artic and its indication that events are now running ahead of predictions with potentially catastrophic implications is at the link below. This encompasses the acceleration of emissions, an assessment of further destabilisation of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and the failure to take account of various feedbacks including increased ocean saturation.

http://www.carbonequity.info/PDFs/Arctic.pdf

[John Mason]

Now you can see why the UKWW Climatic Discussion and Analysis Forum was created!

Cheers - John 

[sunspoter]

But the policy makers aren't led by scientists and neither is public opinion, quite scarily even some scientists take their lead from the media, be that mainstream media or commentary texts. Why can't everyone come clean and admit they don't know?

[sunspoter]

The science is actually quite clear, the science isn't the issue and not many of us are taking issue with the science. We take issue with the notion that it's pimped as climate change is 100% percent caused by humans and that's just not true and if it were true non of us invented or contributed to the industrial revolution, we aren't Victorians or Edwardian and we didn't create the life we lead we were born into it, and even the romans should take their share of the blame as should previous generations.

The science is clear Co2 is a greenhouse gas, what's not clear is how much is actually our fault, the science isn't what we are arguing about, we contest how it's being used!

[ldavidcooke]

Hey All;

I just wanted to share the latest from Livescience: http://www.livescien...ths-oceans.html . This link has a link that will take you to a video indicating the the NASA SEAWIFFS satellite images demonstrating the extent of phytoplankton growth change over the last 10 years. (One of the most significant changes can be seen in the equatorial region, (Pay particular attention to the Baja of Mexico).

Regarding the video; I am also including the graph seen at the end as the relationship between temperature and growth of the phytoplankton seem to run in opposition to the idea that the climate change is the cause of the reduction, in truth the scales are inverted from normal which is intended to show the correlation between cooler temperatures and increased phytoplankton, the fun part is it appears that the change in phytoplankton appears to lead temperature: http://www.livescien...=071023seawiffs

Dave

666

[ldavidcooke]

Hey All;

Just a quickie, notice the temperature record in the graph. This is not the same graph as we have been seeing else where any suggestion as to what gives?

Dave