Chemical Oceanography Unit, Department of Astrophysics Geophysics and Oceanography, Universite de Liege
Data Center Description
One of the most challenging issues addressed to the oceanographic community is
to budget atmospheric CO2 fluxes over the oceans. The open ocean has a major
role in the global CO2 cycle, since it absorbs about 29% of the anthropogenic
CO2 inputs (that contribute to 57% of the greenhouse forcing among all
radiative gases). So far, one of the best methods is to compile worldwide
measurements of the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and to compute related CO2
fluxes using wind speed and well-constrained gas transfer velocity
relationships. However, due to the large spatio-temporal variability of pCO2,
budgeting CO2 fluxes requires huge data sets which cover satisfactorily both
spatial and temporal changes.
The Chemical Oceanography Unit of the University of Liège aims to fill two
crucial gaps in the present knowledge of global CO2 fluxes: the ignored Coastal
Ocean and the remote Southern Ocean thought as the "last oceanic sink". In
parallel, the Chemical Oceanography Unit also investigates the potential
feed-backs between the oceanic biota and climate and their impact on global CO2
cycling.
Website: http://www.ulg.ac.be/oceanbio/co2/
[Summary provided by the University of Liege.]
Data Center URL
| URL: http://www.ulg.ac.be/oceanbio/co2/ |
