Annual uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the Weddell Sea derived from a surface layer balance, including estimations of entrainment and new production

Data from two cruises, one in April/May 1996 and one in December/January 1993, covering the same wide area in the offshore Weddell Sea, were used to derive the annual extent of entrainment and the capacity of the biological pump. The former property was obtained with the help of dissolved oxygen data, whereas the latter was approximated with nutrients. Especially the data From April/May, representing the initial state of the winter surface layer, were crucial to assess the annual extent of these processes. The results were applied to our carbon dioxide data. The annual increase of the Total CO2 (TCO2) concentration in the surface layer due to vertical transport amounts to 16.3 mu mol kg(-1). An entrainment rate of deep water in the surface layer amounting to 35 +/- 10 m yr(-1) was deduced. The compensating, biologically mediated TCO2 reduction was calculated to be larger than the TCO2 increase due to vertical transport. Since the balance of these two processes determines whether the Weddell Sea is a source or a sink of CO2, this indicates that the Weddell Sea, albeit upwelling area, is definitely a sink for atmospheric CO2 on an annual basis. This conclusion is further supported by contemplations that the biological drawdown of CO2 in the Weddell Sea as a whole is probably underestimated by our calculations. The new production for the Weddell Sea on a per unit area basis was found to be much higher than that for the Antarctic Ocean, when the latter value is being obtained by traditional biological methods. On the other hand, the CO2 uptake by the Weddell Sea on a per unit area basis is somewhat smaller than the CO2 uptake by the world ocean. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.