Harmonization of global surface ocean pCO2 mapped products and their flux calculations; an improved estimate of the ocean carbon sink

Abstract

Abstract. Air-sea flux of carbon dioxide (CO2) is a critical component of the global carbon cycle and the climate system with the ocean removing about a quarter of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by human activities over the last decade. A common approach to estimate this net flux of CO2 across the air-sea interface is the use of surface ocean CO2 observations and the computation of the flux through a bulk parameterization approach. Yet, the details for how this is done in order to arrive at a global ocean CO2 uptake estimate varies greatly, unnecessarily enhancing the uncertainties. Here we reduce some of these uncertainties by harmonizing an ensemble of products that interpolate surface ocean CO2 observations to near global coverage. We propose a common methodology to fill in missing areas in the products and to calculate fluxes and present a new estimate of the net flux. The ensemble data product, SeaFlux (Fay et al. (2021), doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4133802 , https://github.com/luke-gregor/SeaFlux ), accounts for the diversity of the underlying mapping methodologies. Utilizing six global observation-based mapping products (CMEMS-FFNN, CSIR-ML6, JENA-MLS, JMA-MLR, MPI-SOMFFN, NIES-FNN), the SeaFlux ensemble approach adjusts for methodological inconsistencies in flux calculations that can result in an average error of 15 % in global mean flux estimates. We address differences in spatial coverage of the surface ocean CO2 between the mapping products which ultimately yields an increase in CO2 uptake of up to 19 % for some products. Fluxes are calculated using three wind products (CCMPv2, ERA5, and JRA55). Application of an appropriately scaled gas exchange coefficient has a greater impact on the resulting flux than solely the choice of wind product. With these adjustments, we derive an improved ensemble of surface ocean pCO2 and air-sea carbon flux estimates. The SeaFlux ensemble suggests a global mean uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere of 1.92 +/- 0.35 PgC yr-1. This work aims to support the community effort to perform model-data intercomparisons which will help to identify missing fluxes as we strive to close the global carbon budget.