THE FORGOTTEN CARBON SINK

摘要

The build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the implications for global warming are well known. Since there are other "sinks" for this carbon dioxide, not all of the carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere accumulates in the atmosphere. When we deal with storage and transport of carbon dioxide, we typically use units of Gigatonnes of carbon (GtC) for the storage of carbon dioxide in different reservoirs of the Earth system, while transports are represented as fluxes between reservoirs measured in GtC per year (GtC/year). Many very large reservoirs, notably sedimentary rocks containing carbonates, are very important on geological time scales, but the study of the contemporary carbon cycle is mostly concerned with a few reservoirs that are subject to relatively rapid change due to the activity of man. Among those reservoirs is the ocean, extending from the remotest deep oceanic regions to our coastal seas. The role of the oceans as the forgotten carbon sink is the subject of this article.