In 5-10 years, an intensive Southern Ocean carbon program will be needed to resolve uncertainties in the size, dynamics, and global significance of the Southern Ocean as a carbon sink, the processes controlling this sink, and the response of the sink to climate change in the Southern Hemisphere. NASA will partner with other agencies to better understand carbon export. New measurements of carbon in the coastal ocean and of organic particle content or profiles throughout the ocean will be needed to reduce uncertainties in coastal carbon fluxes and to quantify carbon export to the deep ocean. NASA's strategy for reducing climate change uncertainty includes improving land, ocean, and atmosphere carbon cycling models, and, more importantly, providing the new observations required to locate global sources and sinks of carbon, quantify their strengths, and understand how they depend on environmental factors that are rapidly changing.
![the carbon cycle the carbon cycle](https://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/system/resources/detail_files/35_global_carbon_cycle.jpg)
Global observations of the spatial and temporal patterns of carbon exchange and understanding the underlying processes that regulate this exchange is critical for predicting the future behavior of these carbon sinks. However, only about half of the carbon released through fossil fuel combustion in this time has remained in the atmosphere, the rest being sequestered the ocean. In more recent history, atmospheric concentrations have increased by 80 ppm (parts per million) over the past 150 years. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the annual uptake and release of carbon dioxide by the land and the ocean had been on average just about balanced.
![the carbon cycle the carbon cycle](https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/2018/16-scientistspr.jpg)
Carbon is also sequestered for long periods of time in carbon reservoirs (sinks) such as deep ocean and ocean sediment. The flux of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the ocean is a function of surface mixing (related to wind speed) and the difference the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air and water The concentration in the ocean depends on the atmosphere and ocean carbon dioxide partial pressure which, in turn, is a function of temperature, alkalinity (which is closely related to salinity), photosynthesis, and respiration. The total amount of carbon in the ocean is about 50 times greater than the amount in the atmosphere, and is exchanged with the atmosphere on a time-scale of several hundred years.Ĭarbon atoms are constantly being cycled through the earth's ocean by a number of physical and biological processes. The ocean plays a vital dominant role in the Earth's carbon cycle.