Warmer oceans release CO2 faster than thought

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20413-warmer-oceans-release-co2-faster-than-thought.html

19:02 25 April 2011 by Wendy Zukerman

As the world's oceans warm, their massive stores of dissolved carbon dioxide may be quick to bubble back out into the atmosphere and amplify the greenhouse effect, according to a new study.

The oceans capture around 30 per cent of human carbon dioxide emissions and hide it in their depths. This slows the march of global warming somewhat. But climate records from the end of the last ice age show that as temperatures climb, the trend reverses and the oceans emit CO2, which exacerbates warming.

Previous studies have suggested that it takes between 400 and 1300 years for this to happen. But now the most precise analysis to date has whittled that figure down.

"We now think the delay is more like 200 years, possibly even less," says Tas van Ommen from the Australian Antarctic Division, in Hobart, who led the study.

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