Quantifying and predicting Canada's ocean carbon sink

海洋吸收了人类活动产生的二氧化碳的三分之一，从而大大降低了大气中的二氧化碳含量，减缓了气候变化的速度。然而，海洋的碳吸收率容易受到气候变化的影响，而且在未来很可能会下降。尽管海洋的重要性和脆弱性，但人们对海洋吸收碳的速度却知之甚少，尤其是在较小的区域尺度上，海洋吸收碳的速度可能有多大的变化。加拿大一直在大力投资于观测海洋的新技术和扩大数值模拟资源。我们提出的海洋碳汇项目旨在通过开发技术将海洋碳的新观测转化为海洋碳吸收率的可靠估计来利用这些投资。这将涉及校准和质量控制的观测，确定海气通量的观测，量化生物过程对碳的影响，并将不同的测量纳入一个单一的区域平均值。我们的项目还试图改善数值计算机模型的预测。这将涉及确定不同模型的优点和缺点，量化观测到的变化在多大程度上是由长期气候变化而不是自然变率驱动的，并确定哪些海洋过程需要包括在模型中，以获得对未来海洋碳吸收的最准确预测。我们将通过与加拿大各地的学术和政府科学家建立一个学生和博士后研究员网络来实现这些目标，以促进我们对加拿大三个海洋区域碳动力学的了解，并开发综合观测/建模技术，以量化和预测海洋作为重要碳汇的自然作用。

The ocean absorbs about one third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities, resulting insubstantially lower atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and slower rates of climate change. However, the ocean'scarbon absorption rate is vulnerable to climate change and is likely to decrease in the future. Despite itsimportance and vulnerability, the rate at which the ocean absorbs carbon is surprisingly poorly known,especially how variable it may be on smaller regional scales. Canada has been investing significantly in newtechnologies to observe the ocean and in expanded numerical modelling resources. Our proposed MarineCarbon Sink project seeks to capitalize on these investments by developing techniques to transform newobservations of marine carbon into reliable estimates of the ocean's carbon absorption rate. This will involvecalibrating and quality controlling the observations, determining air-sea fluxes from the observations,quantifying the impact of biological processes on carbon, and integrating different measurements into a singleregional average. Our project also seeks to improve predictions from numerical computer models. This willinvolve determining the strengths and weaknesses of different models, quantifying the extent to whichobserved changes are driven by long-term climate change as opposed to natural variability, and establishingwhich marine processes need to be included in models to obtain the most accurate predictions of future oceancarbon absorption. We will accomplish these objectives by forming a network of students and a postdoctoralresearcher with academic and government scientists across Canada to advance our understanding of carbondynamics in Canada's three ocean regions and to develop integrated observational/modelling techniques toquantify and predict the ocean's natural role as an important carbon sink.