Warmer Seas Absorbing Less Carbon Dioxide

Professor Kitack Lee says the decreased absorption of CO2 is unlikely to be confined to the Sea of Japan.

South Korean researchers warn that they have observed an alarming and sudden collapse in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) being absorbed from the atmosphere by the Sea of Japan.

The finding, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, has sparked fears that climate change has begun to accelerate.

Kitack Lee, an associate professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, said he found warmer waters due to climate change have disrupted a process known as “ventilation” in which flowing and churning of the seas drag absorbed CO2 from surface waters to the deep.

“In other words, the increase in atmospheric temperature due to global warming can profoundly influence the ocean ventilation, thereby decreasing the uptake rate of CO2,” Lee said.

He and Pavel Tishchenko, a scientist at the Russian Pacific Oceanological Institute in Vladivostok, made their findings after collecting samples of water from 23 sites across the Sea of Japan.

They found the amount of CO2 absorbed between 1999 and 2007 was half the level observed from 1992 to 1999.

Map Graphic: Earthweek