-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: May 19, 2007 12:20:05 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Mankind's Future Going Down the Sink
Southern Ocean Loaded With Carbon Dioxide
By Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters
http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/southern-ocean-loaded-with-
carbon/20070518204409990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
WASHINGTON (May 17) - The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so
loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so
more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet,
scientists reported on Thursday.
Human activity is the main culprit, said researcher Corinne Le
Quere, who called the finding very alarming.
The phenomenon wasn't expected to be apparent for decades, Le Quere
said in a telephone interview from the University of East Anglia in
Britain.
"We thought we would detect these only the second half of this
century, say 2050 or so," she said. But data from 1981 through 2004
show the sink is already full of carbon dioxide. "So I find this
really quite alarming."
The Southern Ocean is one of the world's biggest reservoirs of
carbon, known as a carbon sink. When carbon is in a sink -- whether
it's an ocean or a forest, both of which can lock up carbon dioxide
-- it stays out of the atmosphere and does not contribute to global
warming .
The new research, published in the latest edition of the journal
Science, indicates that the Southern Ocean has been saturated with
carbon dioxide at least since the 1980s.
This is significant because the Southern Ocean accounts for 15
percent of the global carbon sink, Le Quere said.
Global Warming Spurs Winds
Increased winds over the last half-century are to blame for the
change, Le Quere said. These winds blend the carbon dioxide
throughout the Southern Ocean, mixing the naturally occurring
carbon that usually stays deep down with the human-caused carbon.
When natural carbon is brought up to the surface by the winds, it
is harder for the Southern Ocean to accommodate more human-
generated carbon, which comes from factories, coal-fired power
plants and petroleum-powered motor vehicle exhaust.
The winds themselves are caused by two separate human factors.
First, the human-spawned ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere
over the Southern Ocean has created large changes in temperature
throughout the atmosphere, Le Quere said.
Second, the uneven nature of global warming has produced higher
temperatures in the northern parts of the world than in the south,
which has also made the winds accelerate in the Southern Ocean.
"Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the world's
oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the 500 gigatons (500
billion tons) of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans,"
Chris Rapley of the British Antarctic Survey said in a statement.
"The possibility that in a warmer world the Southern Ocean -- the
strongest ocean sink -- is weakening is a cause for concern,"
Rapley said.
Another sign of warming in the Antarctic was reported on Tuesday by
NASA , which found vast areas of snow melted on the southern
continent in 2005 in a process that may accelerate invisible
melting deep beneath the surface.
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