The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]
Nature’s carbon cycle works even better than was believed. The researchers say ‘it can be assumed that the global influence of this mechanism as a carbon sink is actually much greater’.
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Every year, the cross-shelf transport of carbon-rich particles from the Barents and Kara Seas could bind up to 3.6 million metric tons of CO2 in the Arctic deep sea for millennia, says Science Daily.
In this region alone, a previously unknown transport route uses the biological carbon pump and ocean currents to absorb atmospheric CO2 on the scale of Iceland’s total annual emissions, as researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and partner institutes report in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.
Compared to other oceans, the biological productivity of the central Arctic Ocean is limited, since sunlight is often in short supply — either due to the…
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Climate Collections 
It annoys me that the authors of papers like these rarely use units that would be meaningful to most readers. “Up to 3.6 million metric tons of CO2 [per year]” = 0.0036 Gt CO2 = 0.0010 PgC = 0.00045 ppmv CO2.
You can compare that to anthropogenic CO2 emissions which total about 5 ppmv per year, or to total natural CO2 sinks of about 2½ ppmv per year. So the authors of this paper, if it is correct, have identified the cause of about 1/5500-th of the natural carbon sinks which remove CO2 from the air. 🥱
Strangely, neither the article nor the paper uses the word “negligible.”
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From Climate Collections’ FB page:
“For those who fear CO2, here’s good news–a mechanism to remove it from the atmosphere for millions of years.
For the rest of us rational folks… meh!”
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I’m envisioning a scene…
Scientist: “Hi, you must be St. Peter!”
Pete: “Yeah, that’s me. I didn’t expect to see you quite so soon.”
Scientist (sheepishly): “I guess I shouldn’t have tried to make it through on the yellow.”
Pete: “Yeah, you got that right, too. So, what did you do with your life?”
Scientist: “I helped identify the cause of up to 1/5500-th of the natural carbon sinks which remove CO2 from the air.”
{awkward pause}
Pete (blinks a couple of times): “Okay, then.”
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