Assessing the potential long-term increase of oceanic fossil fuel CO 2 uptake due to CO 2 -calcification feedback

By A. Ridgwell, I. Zondervan, J. Hargreaves, J. Bijma, T. Lenton. 2007

122 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract. Plankton manipulation experiments exhibit a wide range of sensitivities of biogenic calcification to simulated anthropogenic acidification of the ocean, with the "lab rat" of planktic calcifiers, Emiliania huxleyi apparently not representative of calcification generally. We assess the implications of this observational uncertainty by creating an ensemble of realizations of an Earth system model that encapsulates a comparable range of uncertainty in calcification response to ocean acidification. We predict that a substantial reduction in marine carbonate production is possible in the future, with enhanced ocean CO2 sequestration across the model ensemble driving a 4–13% reduction in the year 3000 atmospheric fossil fuel CO2 burden. Concurrent changes in ocean circulation and surface temperatures in the model contribute about one third to the increase in CO2 uptake. We find that uncertainty in the predicted strength of CO2-calcification feedback seems to be dominated by the assumption as to which species of calcifier contribute most to carbonate production in the open ocean.

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/73d8ba716da63106fbfe0642ab29bdeac201ab18

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In Environmental Chemistry

1. Sebastian Rokitta
2. B. Rost

In Oceanography

1. Sebastian Rokitta
2. B. Rost
3. U. Riebesell
4. J. Raven
5. K. Crawfurd

Citations in the corpus

• Effects of CO2 and their modulation by light in the life‐cycle stages of the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi (2012, background): “As these processes affect the CO2 exchange with the atmosphere, an influence of OA on these organisms may alter the biogeochemical cycling of C and thereby climate (Zondervan et al. 2001; Rost and Riebesell 2004; Ridgwell et al. 2007).”