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Science 31 March 2000:
Vol. 287. no. 5462, pp. 2467 - 2470
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5462.2467
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Global Carbon Sinks and Their Variability Inferred from Atmospheric O2 and &dgr;13C

M. Battle, 1* M. L. Bender, 1 P. P. Tans, 2 J. W. C. White, 3 J. T. Ellis, 4 T. Conway, 2 R. J. Francey 5

Recent time-series measurements of atmospheric O2 show that the land biosphere and world oceans annually sequestered 1.4 ± 0.8 and 2.0 ± 0.6 gigatons of carbon, respectively, between mid-1991 and mid-1997. The rapid storage of carbon by the land biosphere from 1991 to 1997 contrasts with the 1980s, when the land biosphere was approximately neutral. Comparison with measurements of delta 13CO2 implies an isotopic flux of 89 ± 21 gigatons of carbon per mil per year, in agreement with model- and inventory-based estimates of this flux. Both the delta 13C and the O2 data show significant interannual variability in carbon storage over the period of record. The general agreement of the independent estimates from O2 and delta 13C is a robust signal of variable carbon uptake by both the land biosphere and the oceans.

1 Department of Geoscience, Guyot Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA.
2 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, R/E/CG1, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80303 USA.
3 Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, and Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
4 Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, South Ferry Road, Narragansett, RI 02882, USA.
5 Division of Atmospheric Research, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Mordialloc, Victoria 3195, Australia.
*   Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bowdoin College, 8800 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011, USA.

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