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idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
During training cruises and regattas, sailors collect valuable data for climate research at sea. A recent study showed that this data can help improve estimates of the marine carbon sink.
Currently, the ocean absorbs more than a quarter of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). Without this significant sink, more CO2 would remain in the atmosphere, causing climate change to progress more rapidly. Therefore, it is important for climate research to quantify this sink as accurately as possible. Measurements of CO2 dissolved in the ocean surface, expressed as partial pressure pCO2, are essential for this purpose. Researchers have compiled millions of records from ships, buoys, floats, and sail drones in the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT). Global estimates of the marine CO2 sink, which are also included in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are based on these data. However, the data points in SOCAT cover only a small part of the ocean. In particular, data is missing from some key regions of the world’s oceans, such as those surrounding Antarctica.
Can measurements taken on board sailing boats help to fill in the blank spots? At the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), researcher Jacqueline Behncke has investigated this question together with colleagues from the University of Hamburg, the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, and the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) in Belgium. Her research is connected to a citizen science initiative by Team Malizia. Led by Hamburg-based skipper Boris Herrmann, the sailors have been collecting valuable data at regattas such as the Vendée Globe since 2018. The initiative is scientifically guided by the MPI-M and GEOMAR and received financial support from the Max Planck Foundation.
“Team Malizia’s voluntary work supports science and raises awareness around an important topic,” said Behncke. “The collaboration has been exciting and productive.”
Additional data changes estimates of carbon uptake
Previously, Behncke and her colleagues had shown that the observational data collected by Team Malizia between 2018 and 2021, which also include one circumnavigation of the globe, has a major impact on estimates of regional carbon uptake, particularly in the Southern Ocean. A second, recent study has investigated the extent to which the sailboat data not only change but also improve estimates of the ocean sink. To accomplish this, the researchers created a global map of pCO2 with the MPI-OM/HAMOCC ocean model and tested whether certain measurement strategies led to an estimate of the CO2 sink that was more consistent with the model reality. The estimates were generated using a machine learning algorithm.
The result: When the artificial intelligence was trained using only the amount of data equivalent to the current observation network, it underestimated the marine carbon sink. The same was true when the researchers additionally imitated the sampling done by Team Malizia and skipper Fabrice Amedeo‘s Nexans-Wewise team between 2018 and 2021. However, when the scientists included additional measurements from two more circumnavigations, the CO2 sink in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean strengthened, in line with the simulation. This improved agreement also persisted when the researchers factored in plausible measurement uncertainties. A systematic measurement error, on the other hand, led to poorer agreement under certain circumstances. “This means that while the quantity of data can compensate for potentially limited quality to a certain degree, regular calibration and maintenance are essential to avoid measurement bias,” said Behncke.
Although the sailboat data improve the estimate of the marine carbon sink, the long-term development of CO2 uptake in the Southern Ocean is not accurately captured even with the additional two circumnavigations, and the trend continues to be overestimated. According to the authors, further observations are urgently needed. Therefore, staying the course may be worthwhile, as sailboat data can help meet this demand.
Dr. Jacqueline Behncke, formerly: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology/ now:
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research: jbehncke@geomar.de
Behncke, J., Ilyina, T., Chegini, F., and Landschützer, P. (2026) Improved air-sea CO2 flux estimates from sailboat measurements. Science Advances 12, eadz1502. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz1502
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