OCEANS FOUND TO BE ABSORBING FAR LESS CARBON DIOXIDE

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BBC - The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans
has reduced, scientists have said. University of East Anglia researchers
gauged CO2 absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from
merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments. Results of their
10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the
mid-90s and 2000 to 2005. Scientists believe global warming might get
worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.

Researchers said the findings, published in a paper for the Journal of
Geophysical Research, were surprising and worrying because there were
grounds for believing that, in time, the ocean might become saturated
with our emissions. . . Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only
half of it stays there; the rest goes into carbon sinks. There are two
major natural carbon sinks: the oceans and the land "biosphere". They
are equivalent in size, each absorbing a quarter of all CO2 emissions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7053903.stm

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