Long says he and other researchers were somewhat skeptical about that takeaway, however. That sparked concerns that the Southern OceanвЂ™s role in buffering the impacts of climate change on Earth might not be so robust as once thought. Calculations based on data collected from 2014 through 2017 by 35 of the floats suggested that parts of the ocean were actually releasing a great deal of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere during winter ( SN: 6/2/19). The 2018 study had used newly deployed deep-diving ocean floats, now numbering almost 200, that are part of a project called Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling, or SOCCOM. 3 Science, suggest that from 2009 through 2018, the Southern Ocean was still a net sink, taking up a total of about 0.55 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. In contrast, the new findings, published in the Dec. However, the float-based estimates had suggested that, over the course of a year, the Southern Ocean was actually a net source of carbon dioxide rather than a sink, ultimately emitting about 0.3 billion metric tons of the gas back to the atmosphere each year. That means it plays an outsize role in modulating some of the immediate impacts of those emissions. ThatвЂ™s because the Southern Ocean alone has been thought to be responsible for nearly half of the global ocean uptake of humansвЂ™ COв‚‚ emissions each year. But вЂњin many ways, was reassuring,вЂќ says Matthew Long, an oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. ItвЂ™s not exactly a relief to say that the oceans, which are already becoming more acidic and storing record-breaking amounts of heat due to global warming, might be able to bear a little more of the climate change burden ( SN: 4/28/17 SN: 1/13/21). The new results counter a 2018 report that had found that the ocean surrounding Antarctica might not be taking up as much of the emissions as previously thought, and in some regions may actually be adding COв‚‚ back to the atmosphere.

The Southern Ocean is still busily absorbing large amounts of the carbon dioxide emitted by humansвЂ™ fossil fuel burning, a study based on airborne observations of the gas suggests.

Southern ocean