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Global air-sea CO2 exchange flux since 1980s: results from CMIP6 Earth System Models

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Abstract

The ocean could profoundly modulate the ever-increasing atmospheric CO2 by air-sea CO2 exchange process, which is also able to cause significant changes of physical and biogeochemical properties in return. In this study, we assessed the long-term average and spatial-temporal variability of global air-sea CO2 exchange flux (FCO2) since 1980s basing on the results of 18 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) Earth System Models (ESMs). Our findings indicate that the CMIP6 ESMs simulated global CO2 sink in recent three decades ranges from 1.80 to 2.24 Pg C/a, which is coincidence with the results of cotemporaneous observations. What’s more, the CMIP6 ESMs consistently show that the global oceanic CO2 sink has gradually intensified since 1980s as well as the observations. This study confirms the simulated FCO2 could reach agreements with the observations in the aspect of primary climatological characteristics, however, the simulation skills of CIMP6 ESMs in diverse open-sea biomes are unevenness. None of the 18 CMIP6 ESMs could reproduce the observed FCO2 increasement in the central-eastern tropical Pacific and the midlatitude Southern Ocean. Deficiencies of some CMIP6 ESMs in reproducing the atmospheric pressure systems of the Southern Hemisphere and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) mode of the tropical Pacific are probably the major causes.

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Data Availability and Statement

All data analyzed in this study are publicly available. Outputs from the nine Earth System Models from the CMIP6 were downloaded from the archive at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/.

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Acknowledgment

We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups listed in Table 1 for producing and making available their model output. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Marine Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Baoxiao Qu, **ming Song, Xuegang Li & Huamao Yuan

  2. Marine Ecology and Environmental Sciences Laboratory, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao, 266237, China

    Baoxiao Qu, **ming Song, Xuegang Li, Huamao Yuan & Kun Zhang

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, 100049, China

    Baoxiao Qu, **ming Song, Xuegang Li, Huamao Yuan & Kun Zhang

  4. Center for Ocean Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Baoxiao Qu, **ming Song, Xuegang Li, Huamao Yuan & Kun Zhang

  5. Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Waves, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Kun Zhang

  6. Key Laboratory of Global Change and Marine-Atmospheric Chemistry, Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, **amen, 361005, China

    Suqing Xu

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  1. Baoxiao Qu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to **ming Song.

Additional information

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41806133), the Marine S&T Fund of Shandong Province for the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao) (No. 2022QNLM040003-1), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFA0603204), and the Fund of Key Laboratory of Global Change and Marine-Atmospheric Chemistry, MNR (No. GCMAC1905)

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Qu, B., Song, J., Li, X. et al. Global air-sea CO2 exchange flux since 1980s: results from CMIP6 Earth System Models. J. Ocean. Limnol. 40, 1417–1436 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-021-1096-8

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