Antarctic Ocean Overloaded With Carbon Dioxide

The Southern Ocean is saturated with carbon dioxide and can't absorb any more, report an international team of scientists. The ocean, which surrounds Antarctica, contains 15% of the world's carbon reservoirs. Its inability to absorb more CO2 will likely speed planetary warming.

"We thought we would be able to detect these only the second half of this century, say 2050 or so," she said. But data from 1981 through 2004 show the sink is already full of carbon dioxide. "So I find this really quite alarming."

So why is this happening so soon? Turns out it's our fault. Sigh.

Increased winds over the last half-century are to blame for the change,
Le Quere said. These winds blend the carbon dioxide throughout the
Southern Ocean, mixing the naturally occurring carbon that usually stays deep down with the human-caused carbon.

When natural carbon is brought up to the surface by the winds, it is harder for the Southern Ocean to accommodate more human-generated carbon, which comes from factories, coal-fired power plants and petroleum-powered motor vehicle exhaust.

The winds themselves are caused by two separate human factors.

First, the human-spawned ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere over the Southern Ocean has created large changes in temperature throughout the atmosphere, Le Quere said.

Second, the uneven nature of global warming has produced higher temperatures in the northern parts of the world than in the south, which has also made the winds accelerate in the Southern Ocean.

Study Shows Southern Ocean Saturated with Carbon Dioxide [Reuters]