Estimation of surface carbonate system parameters in the North Pacific based on pCO2 observations

Abstract

Although the ocean absorbs about a quarter of the CO2 emitted by human activities to mitigate global warming, the warming of the ocean itself and the ocean acidification caused by the absorbed CO2 may have serious impacts on the marine ecosystem. It is important to understand the spatial and temporal variability in carbonate parameters such as CO2 and pH in the ocean in order to predict future climate change and its impact. In this study, we first estimated the spatial and temporal distribution of pCO2 using a neural network method based on pCO2 observations by the National Institute for Environmental Studies, and then evaluated the distribution of carbonate parameters such as pH by combining it with the distribution of alkalinity estimated from water temperature and salinity. In this presentation, we report in the meeting on the interannual variability and trends of air-sea CO2 fluxes, pH, and aragonite saturation in the North Pacific.