Arctic melt soaks up carbon dioxide

The clouds of global warming don’t exactly boast a silver lining, but there is a little bonus. Melting sea ice in the Arctic is enabling ocean waters to soak up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Ice retreat over the last 30 years has tripled the amount of CO₂ the Arctic Ocean can absorb.

Nick Bates of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences and colleagues calculated CO₂ uptake in the Arctic Ocean from measurements taken from the Chuckchi Sea and Canada basin in 2002 and 2004. They found that CO₂ uptake from the atmosphere increased dramatically…