Basic HTML Version
International Journal of Marine Science 2014, Vol.4, No.72, 1-7
http://ijms.biopublisher.ca
6
Figure 6 Monthly air-sea CO
2
fluxes versus SST at PAP site
Figure 7 Monthly air-sea CO
2
fluxes versus SST at K1 CELAS site
3 Conclusions
This work indicates that the surface water
p
CO
2
cycle
is characteristically marked by minimum and
maximum
p
CO
2
levels for the summertime and
wintertime respectively. There is a significant and
consistent undersaturation of the PAP site of the North
Atlantic Ocean. The
p
CO
2
concentration at the K1
CELAS demonstrated that the site is mostly
undersaturated while exhibiting some degree of
supersaturation between February and March 2005.
Estimated net CO
2
uptake of 2.96 ±1.73 and 1.84 ±
1.3 mol m
-2
CO
2
a
-1
were obtained during PAP (2nd -
4th) and K1 CELAS deployments respectively, thus
indicating a regional perennial sink for CO
2
. On an
interseasonal timescale, significant difference in flux
took place during the wintertime, which witnessed a
strong pull of CO
2
compared to a moderate sink
during the summertime. However, seasonal climatic
changes in temperature, stratification, intense
biological activities as well as convective mixing
processes are identified as the primary drivers of
air-sea flux variability for ocean carbon exchange in
the region.
Acknowledgements
The EuroSITES Project data was used for this research. The
contributions of the principal investigator and other scientists
involved in the PAP project are acknowledged. The assistance
of Galen McKinley and Arne Körtzinger
to the first author is
acknowledged. The authors would like to thank anonymous
reviewers for their comments and suggestions that much
improved the original manuscript.
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