Sea ice controls net ocean CO2 uptake by regulating wintertime stratification

Droste, Elise S.; Bakker, Dorothee C. E.; Venables, Hugh J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6445-8462; Jones, Elizabeth M; Legge, Oliver J.; Hoppema, Mario; Meredith, Michael P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7342-7756; Dall’Olmo, Giorgio; Queste, Bastien; Lee, Gareth A.. 2025 Sea ice controls net ocean CO2 uptake by regulating wintertime stratification. Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans, 6, 457. 11, pp. 10.1038/s43247-025-02395-x

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Text (Open Access) Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. s43247-025-02395-x.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (5MB) | Preview

Abstract/Summary

Sea-air exchange of carbon dioxide in the Southern Ocean is strongly seasonal, with ocean uptake in summer, which is partly offset by carbon dioxide outgassing in winter. This seasonal balance can shift due to sea ice conditions, inducing interannual variability in the Southern Ocean carbon sink. A decade (2010–2020) of unique, year-round marine carbonate chemistry observations from the Rothera Time Series (West Antarctic Peninsula) reveals that interannual variability in seawater fugacity of carbon dioxide depends on wintertime processes. Sea ice duration controls ocean stratification, which acts as a gateway to the carbon-rich ocean interior. Consequently, years with persistent sea ice cover and high mean winter stratification absorb, on average, 20% more carbon dioxide than years with less sea ice and weaker stratification in winter. Wintertime marine observations are therefore essential to resolve critical processes and reliably quantify interannual variability of the sea-air carbon dioxide flux in seasonally sea ice-covered regions.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1038/s43247-025-02395-x
ISSN:	2169-9291
Date made live:	20 Jun 2025 12:47 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/538265

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