UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG
Storms over the waters around Antarctica drive an outgassing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to a new international study with researchers from the University of Gothenburg. The research group used advanced ocean robots for the study, which provides a better understanding of climate change and can lead to better global climate models.
The world’s southernmost ocean, the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica, plays an important role in the global climate because its waters contain large amounts of carbon dioxide. A new international study, in which researchers from the University of Gothenburg participated, has examined the complex processes driving air-sea fluxes of gasses, such as carbon dioxide.
Storms bring carbon dioxide-rich waters to the surface
The research group is now delivering new findings that shed light on the area’s important role in climate change.
“We show how the intense storms that often occur in the region increase ocean mixing and bring carbon dioxide-rich waters from the deep to the surface. This drives an outgassing of carbon dioxide from the ocean to the atmosphere. There has been a lack of knowledge about these complex processes, so the study is an important key to understanding the Southern Ocean’s significance for the climate and the global carbon budget”, says Sebastiaan Swart, professor of oceanography at the University of Gothenburg and co-author of the study.
Facilitates better climate models
Half of all carbon dioxide bound in the world’s oceans is found in the Southern Ocean. At the same time, climate change is expected to result in more intense storms in the future. Therefore, it is vital to understand the storms’ impact on the outgassing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the researchers point out.
“This knowledge is necessary to be able to make more accurate predictions about future climate change. Currently, these environmental processes are not captured by global climate models”, says Marcel du Plessis at the University of Gothenburg, who also participated in the study.
Pioneering ocean robotics
Measuring the inaccessible and stormy waters around Antarctica for a long period of time is a real challenge, which the researchers tackled with the help of unique robot technology. For several months, autonomous ocean robots; drones and ocean gliders, collected data from the surface and through to depths of one kilometer.
“This pioneering technology gave us the opportunity to collect data with long endurance, which would not have been possible via a research vessel. Thanks to these ocean robots we can now fill important knowledge gaps and gain a better understanding of the importance of the ocean for the climate, says Sebastiaan Swart.
Contact: Sebastiaan Swart, Professor of Oceanography at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Marine Sciences. Phone: 0046 723 667672, Email: sebastiaan.swart@marine.gu.se
About the research
The article “Storms drive outgassing of CO2 in the subpolar Southern Ocean” has been published in Nature Communications. The international study was carried out in a collaboration between Sebastiaan Swart and Marcel du Plessis at the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Gothenburg and, among others, CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) in South Africa. The first author is Sarah Nicholson at CSIR.
The contributions to the study from University of Gothenburg have been supported by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation through the Wallenberg Academy Fellows Program and the Swedish Research Council.
JOURNAL
Nature Communications
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Storms drive outgassing of CO2 in the subpolar Southern Ocean
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
10-Jan-2022
Up till about 1990-2000, geology and palaeoclimate research recognised the main drivers of climate change in deep time as continental rearrangement through tectonics, mountain range uplift, latitudinal distribution of land masses, ocean circulation pattern, occasional volcanism from continent separations or collisions, amount and distribution of shallow seas, etc.
Then after the turn of the millenium, at the same time that CO2 had become politicised and a hugely lucrative catastrophist meme, suddenly “scientists” started re-writing palaeoclimate around CO2. Mentions of tectonic movement, uplift, cratons etc. disappeared from the palaeoclimate narrative. They all affected to have received a revelation that only CO2 was responsible for any climate change, past, present or future.
We’re supposed to believe that this epiphany about climate history being about CO2 and nothing else, was a genuine scientific one, following the data? When it just happened to coincide with the CO2 alarmist meme increasing by 2 orders of magnitude the funding and political status of climate sciences?
No – none of this is science by any stretch of the imagination.
All oceans are very stormy at the high latitudes, north or south, from the “roaring 40s” and above. Both the Arctic Ocean and the “Southern Ocean” (formerly called the Antarctic Ocean) are largely covered with ice most of the year, so atmospheric storms can have zero effect in ocean mixing on ice covered oceans. Sounds like a whole lotta bullshit to me, not to mention the assertion without any data that storms are supposed to get stormier as the atmosphere supposedly warms.
The BS never ends. The ocean surface waters are in direct contact with the atmosphere. The atmosphere is richer in CO2 than it has been for many hundreds of years. The surface waters, balancing with the atmosphere, must therefore have a higher CO2 concentration than the deep waters. Upwelling of deep water, whether caused by storms or anything else, will therefore reduce atmospheric CO2, not increase it.
So – where on Earth (literally) do they think that this higher concentration of CO2 has come from? The deep water must have acquired its CO2 before it sank from the surface up to a few hundred years ago. It can’t have had as much CO2 back then as the surface waters do now. It can’t accumulate CO2 after it has sunk to the depths. It cannot do what they say it is doing. Not unless the whole CO2 theory as coded into the models is BS.
A reminder of the words of marine biogeochemist John Martin speaking of raising iron levels in the Southern Ocean to spur phytoplankton growth. “Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you the next ice age.”
How do a limited number of measurements from drones over a short period of time tell us anything meaningful? I know this is now the accepted standard but lets stop pretending it is informative.
Now that we have satellites that can track the desorption of CO2 from the ocean, does their data match the results from the oceanic study?
Rain strips CO₂ from the atmosphere. It falls to the ocean surface, raising CO₂ content. Water temperatures greater than rain temperatures and storm turbulence return some CO₂ to the atmosphere.
So does Mexican food. 🌮🌯🍮🇲🇽
So, humans play what role in this off-gassing?
Of what relevance is this?
There are ambiguous signs as to whether the southern ocean and hemisphere, and Antarctica, are warming or cooling:
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2022/01/13/antarctic-formation-of-cold-saline-deep-water-is-accelerating/
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2021/05/13/southern-hemisphere-sea-ice-now-extends-80-km-farther-north-than-prior-estimates/
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/09/12/widespread-signals-of-southern-hemisphere-ocean-cooling-as-well-as-the-amoc/