FRANCE: Contravening earlier fears, the Antarctic Ocean has been found absorbing more amounts of carbon dioxide over the last decade, according to researchers on Thursday.
The findings turn estimates put forward a decade ago, upside down, depicting that the seas engulfing the continent were approaching a high point and would no longer be able to absorb any more amounts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Since long time, as the research depicts, the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide put into the atmosphere by human activity has only increased and, also increasing the amount of CO2 consumed by the Antarctic Ocean.
Antarctic Ocean, also called the Southern Ocean, suffices nearly half of the carbon dioxide taken by the world’s oceans, making it hard at reducing the worst effects of climate change.
Announcing the findings “The seas surrounding the Antarctica have breathed in significantly more CO2 than they release. And more importantly, they suck in a large part of the CO2 that released into the atmosphere by human activities like burning fossil fuels, etc,.” said co-author Dorothee Bakker, of the University of East Anglia, in a statement.
She pointed that the previous suggestions of a saturation point had been startling at that time and that these new results show the Antarctic Ocean has reached its expected strength or to be exact, saturation point”.
The study, published in the journal ‘Science,’ is constructed carbon dioxide measurements of surface water sampled throughout the last decade.
The researchers, led by Nicolas Gruber of the university ETH Zurich, attributed this comeback of CO2 absorption to changes in present weather patterns.
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