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The Southern Indian Ocean is a major reservoir for rapid carbon exchange with the atmosphere, plays a key role in the world’s carbon cycle. To understand the importance of anthropogenic CO2 uptake in the Southern Indian Ocean, a variety of methods have been used to quantify the magnitude of the CO2 flux between air and sea. The basic approach is based on the bulk formula—the air-sea CO2 flux is commonly calculated by the difference in the CO2 partial pressure between the ocean and the atmosphere, the gas transfer velocity, the surface wind speed, and the CO2 solubility in seawater. However, relying solely on wind speed to measure the gas transfer velocity at the sea surface increases the uncertainty of CO2 flux estimation. Recent studies have shown that the generation and breaking of ocean waves also significantly affect the gas transfer process at the air-sea interface. In this study, we highlight the impact of windseas on the process of air-sea CO2 exchange and address its important role in CO2 uptake in the Southern Indian Ocean. We run the WAVEWATCH III model to simulate surface waves in this region over the period from January 1st 2002 to December 31st 2021. Then, we use the spectral partitioning method to isolate windseas and swells from total wave fields. Finally, we calculate the CO2 flux based on the new semiempirical equation for gas transfer velocity considering only windseas. We found that after considering windseas’ impact, the seasonal mean zonal flux (mmol/m2·d) increased approximately 10%-20% compared with that calculated solely on wind speed in all seasons. Evolution of air-sea net carbon flux (PgC) increased around 5.87%-32.12% in the latest 5 years with the most significant seasonal improvement appeared in summer. Long-term trend analysis also indicated that the CO2 absorption capacity of the whole Southern Indian Ocean gradually increased during the past 20 years. These findings extend the understanding of the roles of the Southern Indian Ocean in the global carbon cycle and are useful for making management policies associated with marine environmental protection and global climatic change mitigation.

The past decade has seen significant technological advance in the observation of trace gas fluxes over the open ocean, most notably CO2, but also an impressive list of other gases. Here we will emphasize flux observations from the air-side of the interface including both turbulent covariance (direct) and surface-layer similarity-based (indirect) bulk transfer velocity methods. Most applications of direct covariance observations have been from ships but recently work has intensified on buoy-based implementation. The principal use of direct methods is to quantify empirical coefficients in bulk estimates of the gas transfer velocity. Advances in direct measurements and some recent field programs that capture a considerable range of conditions with wind speeds exceeding 20 ms-1 are discussed. We use coincident direct flux measurements of CO2 and dimethylsulfide (DMS) to infer the scaling of interfacial viscous and bubble-mediated (whitecap driven) gas transfer mechanisms. This analysis suggests modest chemical enhancement of CO2 flux at low wind speed. We include some updates to the theoretical structure of bulk parameterizations (including chemical enhancement) as framed in the COAREG gas transfer algorithm.

Summary The Arctic Ocean (AO) is an important basin for global oceanic carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) uptake, but the mechanisms controlling air–sea gas fluxes are not fully understood, especially over short and long timescales. The oceanic sink of CO 2 is an important part of the global carbon budget. Previous studies have shown that in the AO differences in the partial pressure of CO 2 (Δ p CO 2 ) and gas transfer velocity ( k ) both contribute significantly to interannual air–sea CO 2 flux variability, but that k is unimportant for multidecadal variability. This study combined Earth Observation (EO) data collected in 2010 with the in situ p CO 2 dataset from Takahashi et al. (2009) (T09) using a recently developed software toolbox called FluxEngine to determine the importance of k and Δ p CO 2 on CO 2 budgets in two regions of the AO – the Greenland Sea (GS) and the Barents Sea (BS) with their continental margins. Results from the study indicate that the variability in wind speed and, hence, the gas transfer velocity, generally play a major role in determining the temporal variability of CO 2 uptake, while variability in monthly Δ p CO 2 plays a major role spatially, with some exceptions.

Understanding how the ocean absorbs anthropogenic CO2 is critical for predicting climate change. We designed Sniffle, a new autonomous drifting buoy with a floating chamber, to measure gas transfer velocities and air–sea CO2 fluxes with high spatiotemporal resolution. Currently, insufficient in situ data exist to verify gas transfer parameterizations at low wind speeds (

Surfactants are ubiquitous in the global oceans: they help form the materially‐distinct sea surface microlayer (SML) across which global ocean‐atmosphere exchanges take place, and they reside on the surfaces of bubbles and whitecap foam cells prolonging their lifetime thus altering ocean albedo. Despite their importance, the occurrence, spatial distribution, and composition of surfactants within the upper ocean and the SML remains under‐characterized during conditions of vigorous wave breaking when in‐situ sampling methods are difficult to implement. Additionally, no quantitative framework exists to evaluate the importance of surfactant activity on ocean whitecap foam coverage estimates. Here we use individual laboratory breaking waves generated in filtered seawater and seawater with added soluble surfactant to identify the imprint of surfactant activity in whitecap foam evolution. The data show a distinct surfactant imprint in the decay phase of foam evolution. The area‐time‐integral of foam evolution is used to develop a time‐varying stabilization function, urn:x-wiley:21699275:media:jgrc22369:jgrc22369-math-0001 and a stabilization factor, urn:x-wiley:21699275:media:jgrc22369:jgrc22369-math-0002, which can be used to identify and quantify the extent of this surfactant imprint for individual breaking waves. The approach is then applied to wind‐driven oceanic whitecaps, and the laboratory and ocean urn:x-wiley:21699275:media:jgrc22369:jgrc22369-math-0003 distributions overlap. It is proposed that whitecap foam evolution may be used to determine the occurrence and extent of oceanic surfactant activity to complement traditional in‐situ techniques and extend measurement capabilities to more severe sea states occurring at wind speeds in excess of about 10 m/s. The analysis procedure also provides a framework to assess surfactant‐driven variability within and between whitecap coverage data sets.

Field measurements by eddy correlation indicate an average CO2 uptake of 1.9 g C m(-2) d(-1) by the intertidal Wadden Sea estuary in spring 2008. The flux did not show a dependency on the tide and fluxes during high and low tide were comparable. We hypothesize that biological production in the water column and in microbial mats that cover sediments lead to an undersaturation of CO2 that is strong enough to support the observed fluxes. The total carbon uptake by this intertidal estuary from day of the year 101-168 is estimated to be -1.7 Tg C. Extrapolation of this flux over three months in spring suggests that the uptake of CO2 by this estuary over this period is comparable to 24% of the yearly carbon flux over the North Sea and the European estuaries. Citation: Zemmelink, H. J., H. A. Slagter, C. van Slooten, J. Snoek, B. Heusinkveld, J. Elbers, N. J. Bink, W. Klaassen, C. J. M. Philippart, and H. J. W. de Baar (2009), Primary production and eddy correlation measurements of CO2 exchange over an intertidal estuary, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L19606, doi: 10.1029/2009GL039285.

[1] We report on the water column biogeochemistry in adjacent mangrove and seagrass systems in Gazi Bay (Kenya), with a focus on assessing the sources and cycling of organic and inorganic carbon. Mangrove and seagrass-derived material was found to be the dominant organic carbon sources in the water column, and could be distinguished on the basis of their delta C-13 signatures and particulate organic carbon: total suspended matter (POC/TSM) ratios. Spatially, a distinct boundary existed whereby the dominance of mangrove-derived material decreased sharply close to the interface between the mangrove forest and the dense seagrass beds. The latter is consistent with the reported export of mangrove-derived material, which is efficiently trapped in the adjacent seagrass beds. There were significant net inputs of POC and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) along the Kidogoweni salinity gradient, for which the delta C-13(POC) signatures were consistent with those of mangroves. DOC was the dominant form of organic carbon in both mangrove and seagrass beds, with DOC/POC ratios typically between 3 and 15. Dynamics of dissolved inorganic carbon in the creeks were strongly influenced by diagenetic C degradation in the intertidal mangrove areas, resulting in significant CO2 emission from the water column to the atmosphere. Although highest partial pressure of CO2 (pCO(2)) values and areal CO2 flux rates were observed in the mangrove creeks, and the water column above the seagrass beds was in some locations a net sink of CO2, most of the ecosystems' emission of CO2 to the atmosphere occurred in the seagrass beds adjacent to the mangrove forest. The presence of dense seagrass beds thus had a strong effect on the aquatic biogeochemistry, and resulted in trapping and further mineralization of mangrove-derived POC, intense O-2 production and CO2 uptake. The adjacent seagrass beds provide a large area with conditions favorable to exchange of CO2 with the atmosphere, thereby limiting export of mangrove-derived organic and inorganic carbon toward the coastal ocean. ispartof: Journal of Geophysical Research vol:112 issue:G2 status: published