The global ocean comprises a significant sink for human-emitted carbon dioxide, yet many different processes are at play, causing strong spatial and temporal variations in the distribution of the sea surface pCO2 and the resulting air-sea CO2 fluxes. While dominated by the temperature-driven solubility, physical transport and biogeochemistry, the increase in the sea surface CO2 partial pressure over the past decades is closely following the increase in atmospheric CO2, resulting in a decreasing pH and decreasing saturation states of calcite and aragonite minerals. Despite the increasing abundance of novel data interpolation tools, e.g. based on machine learning, the heterogeneous distribution of CO2 in the surface ocean requires a dense observing network to reconstruct global change. |
