Our oceans are not soaking up as much CO2 as we'd like to.

The sea has always captured the imagination of all people. Neither has it shown mercy to the brave people that dared to traverse it and claimed many lives. Luckily, our oceans also claim a lot of carbon dioxide, helping keep the air we breathe fresh. Not as efficiently as we'd like, though.



I assume we all know by now that too much carbon dioxide is hovering in our atmosphere, and the pollution levels continue to grow. But, man has to understand, that not everything is within his power. The various flora of our world soak up the carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. This process is know as photosynthesis. But did you know that most of the carbon dioxide is absorbed by oceans? Firstly, it is used by plankton for photosynthesis, and secondly, it simply dissolves in water as most gases should. Carbon dioxide molecules are heavier than water, so the gas slowly makes its way down to the depths. Add the dead fish and plankton to that, incredible pressure from the water above, and after millions of years of anaerobic decomposition, and you'll get oil!

The main point is that the deep seas are CO2-heavy. But thanks to the already undergoing climate changes, the winds above seas increase, thus causing considerable water mixture in the seas. That means that deep water comes up, bringing all the carbon dioxide with it. Although it will not exactly make it's way back to the atmosphere, the surface waters mix with the deep ones, thus the surface waters will have more carbon dioxide in them and less from the atmosphere can dissolve in them. This phenomenon actually decreased the absorbing capability of 0.5 Gigatonnes per year, to almost 10 times less, 0.05 Gt/y. (Research was conducted in the Southern ocean.)

The study has been conducted over a 10 year period, so the numbers really shouldn't lie. As you see, the ammount of carbon dioxide people produce is not as big as there is already circulating in nature, but that doesn't mean that we should cut down on emissions. After all, it may have been human pollution that caused the weather change. One event leads to another, so let's wait and see.