High‐Frequency Correlations Between Winds and pCO2 Change the California Coastal Upwelling System From a CO2 Sink to a Source

Song, Ruiming; DeVries, Tim; Li, Renjian; Sutton, Adrienne; Send, Uwe; Frazão, Helena C.

doi:10.1029/2025GL115470

i

High‐Frequency Correlations Between Winds and pCO2 Change the California Coastal Upwelling System From a CO2 Sink to a Source

2025
By Song, Ruiming ; DeVries, Tim ; Li, Renjian ; ...
Series: PMEL contribution no. 5731

Details

Journal Title:

Geophysical Research Letters
Personal Author:

Song, Ruiming ; DeVries, Tim ; Li, Renjian ; Sutton, Adrienne ; Send, Uwe ; Frazão, Helena C.
NOAA Program & Office:

OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; PMEL (Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory)
Description:

Net sea‐air CO2 flux can be calculated from observations of seawater and atmosphere partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and estimates of the gas transfer velocity. Typically, these quantities are calculated at a monthly resolution, which misses potentially important high‐frequency temporal variability. Here, we calculated sea‐air CO2 flux at a 3‐hourly resolution using a 10‐year mooring data set (2011–2020) from the central California coastal upwelling region. We identified a significant flux of CO2 from the ocean to the atmosphere due to a positive correlation between seawater pCO2 and wind speed at timescales of hours to days, particularly during the late spring and early summer upwelling season. Accounting for this variability changes the region from a net sink to a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere. These findings imply that CO2 fluxes computed from monthly‐resolution data may miss important shorter‐term variability that contributes to a net outgassing of CO2 from the ocean.
Source:

Geophysical Research Letters, 52(14)
Series:

PMEL contribution no. 5731
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL115470
ISSN:

0094-8276 ; 1944-8007
Format:

pdf
Publisher:

American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Document Type:

Journal Article
Funding:

Grant no. NA20OAR4320278
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY-NC
Compliance:

Submitted
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:55e40b7264991e2249cd619a4aefc7e2467764cb7e6e667c8b0d300b33452b6195f110178e1df55c897ba74d6f0e185bca32f9bd711b12e88f93365afd703887
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/71253/noaa_71253_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 1.20 MB ]

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