Global and regional land carbon storage has been significantly affected by increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate change. Based on fully coupled climate-carbon-cycle simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), we investigate sensitivities of land carbon storage to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate change over the world and 21 regions ...

In a model of ocean-atmosphere interaction that excluded biological processes, the oceanic uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was substantially reduced in scenarios involving global warming relative to control scenarios. The primary reason for the reduced uptake was the weakening or collapse of the ocean thermohaline circulation. Such a large reduction in this ocean uptake would have a ...

Biology and the environment interact, one shaping the other (1). In the oceans, the chemistry of seawater and the chemistry of life are intimately linked (2). In 1958, Alfred Redfield (3) noted that the microscopic plankton of the surface ocean contain carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous atoms in a stoichiometry of ∼105:16:1 and that as these organisms sink and decay, the deep waters of the ocean...

[1] The carbon and oxygen isotopes of CO2 and the oxygen isotopes of H2O are powerful tracers for constraining the dynamics of carbon uptake and water flux on land. The role of land biota in the atmospheric budgets of these isotopes has been extensively explored through the lens of leaf-scale observations. At the ecosystem scale, kinetic fractionation is associated with molecular and turbulent ...

[1] Presently, much of CO2 fossil-fuel emissions are removed from the atmosphere through natural ocean uptake of CO2. Many schemes have now been proposed by which the accumulation of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere could be slowed with intentional further storage of CO2 in the ocean. Our review of the literature indicates inconsistency in whether ambient ocean carbon uptake is included when...