Oceans absorbing less CO2

A nice summary of the bad news on Climate Progress.

A new study in Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d), “Sudden, considerable reduction in recent uptake of anthropogenic CO₂ by the East/Japan Sea,” finds

the rate of CO2 accumulation in the deepest basin of the East/Japan Sea has considerably decreased over the transition period between 1992-1999 and 1999-2007.

In 2007, the BBC reported, “The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world’s oceans has reduced” based on more than 90,000 ship-based measurements of CO2 absorption over ten years.

The Global Carbon Project analysis of the “natural land and ocean CO₂ sinks” finds

the efficiency of these sinks in removing CO2 has decreased by 5% over the last 50 years, and will continue to do so in the future.

This corresponds with the accelerating increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2.

Hm. From the Geophysical Research Letters article:

Three surveys in the East/Japan Sea (1992, 1999 and 2007, respectively) have provided a rare opportunity to measure changes in the accumulation rate of anthropogenic CO₂...

Weren't those all El Niño years? That would affect things a bit right? Abnormally warm water would mean abnormally smaller CO2 concentrations.

Yeah but then they're comparing like with like - El Nino year with El Nino year.  And in fact 2007 was the weakest El Nino of the three, so you would expect CO2 absorption to be better if anything.

fish produce marine calcium carbonate! omg thats another feedback we have messed up.

"This study estimates that three to 15 per cent of marine calcium carbonate is in fact produced by fish in their intestines and then excreted. This is a conservative estimate and the team believes it has the potential to be three times higher."

That's an interesting finding.  Screwing up ecosystems by doing stuff like overfishing always seems to have unintented consequences, doesn't it?

From the link below:

"Smaller fish, which are less likely to be harvested, produce more calcium carbonate per body mass unit because of their higher metabolism."

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090115/full/news.2009.30.html

More research is desperately needed to help nations make appropriate decisions on how to manage marine resources.  This snipet of information was almost lost in the body of the article, but to me is a crucial bit of information since this kind of information is needed to determine viable harvests of marine fish species.  What studies have been done, if any, to document excretions by freshwater fishes? Since our rivers flow into our oceans, scientists will hopefully be gathering this information as well so the influence of fishes in inland waters is better understood as well.

I haven't read the full work yet.  Anyone?

oh dear......

Honey, we shrunk the food -- really, really fast

Interesting and rather disturbing article.

"a new study indicates that our current food-harvesting practices are making the stuff we eat smaller—very quickly.

The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that plants and animals being harvested aggressively around the world from the wild (rather than from farms) are changing more than two and a half times faster than would be expected under natural conditions."

Yikes.  This is the problem with unsustainable food practices.