Scientists in Britain have found that the Atlantic Ocean is soaking up less carbon dioxide than it was previously. The amount of CO2 it absorbs has fallen by half in the past 10 years.
The researchers measured CO2 uptake through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments.
Results of their decade-long study in the North Atlantic show that CO2 uptake halved between the mid-1990s and 2000 to 2005.
The researchers do not know whether the shift is due to climate change, but they say it is very worrying because there have been grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become saturated with our emissions.
That would leave all our emissions available to warm the atmosphere. © 2007 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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