A Comprehensive Analysis of Air‐Sea CO2 Flux Uncertainties Constructed From Surface Ocean Data Products

• Published in: Global biogeochemical cycles Vol. 38; no. 11
• Main Authors: Ford, Daniel J., Blannin, Josh, Watts, Jennifer, Watson, Andrew J., Landschützer, Peter, Jersild, Annika, Shutler, Jamie D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-11-2024
• Subjects: Air; Anthropogenic factors; Assessments; Carbon budget; Carbon dioxide; Carbon dioxide emissions; Carbon dioxide exchange; Carbon dioxide flux; Carbon sequestration; Carbon sinks; CO2 flux; Components; ocean sink; Oceanic analysis; Oceans; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 0886-6236; 1944-9224
• DOI: 10.1029/2024GB008188

Increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions to the atmosphere are partially sequestered into the global oceans through the air‐sea exchange of CO2 and its subsequent movement to depth, commonly referred to as the global ocean carbon sink. Quantifying this ocean carbon sink provides a key component for closing the global carbon budget, which is used to inform and guide policy decisions. These estimates are typically accompanied by an uncertainty budget built by selecting what are perceived as critical uncertainty components based on selective experimentation. However, there is a growing realization that these budgets are incomplete and may be underestimated, which limits their power as a constraint within global budgets. In this study, we present a methodology for quantifying spatially and temporally varying uncertainties in the air‐sea CO2 flux calculations for the fCO2‐product based assessments that allows an exhaustive assessment of all known sources of uncertainties, including decorrelation length scales between gridded measurements, and the approach follows standard uncertainty propagation methodologies. The resulting standard uncertainties are higher than previously suggested budgets, but the component contributions are largely consistent with previous work. The uncertainties presented in this study identify how the significance and importance of key components change in space and time. For an exemplar method (the UExP‐FNN‐U method), the work identifies that we can currently estimate the annual ocean carbon sink to a precision of ±0.70 Pg C yr−1 (1σ uncertainty). Because this method has been built on established uncertainty propagation and approaches, it appears that applicable to all fCO2‐product assessments of the ocean carbon sink.
Key Points
A framework to calculate standard uncertainty budgets for air‐sea CO2 flux data that considers all known sources of uncertainty is described
Spatially and temporally varying air‐sea CO2 flux uncertainties, including their spatial decorrelation lengths are calculated
For an exemplar fCO2‐product based estimate of the global ocean carbon sink, we identify a 1σ uncertainty of ±0.70 Pg C yr−1