The Ocean Carbon Response to COVID‐Related Emissions Reductions

Lovenduski, Nicole S.; Swart, Neil C.; Sutton, Adrienne J.; Fyfe, John C.; McKinley, Galen A.; Sabine, Christopher; Williams, Nancy L.

The decline in global emissions of carbon dioxide due to the COVID‐19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to investigate the sensitivity of the global carbon cycle and climate system to emissions reductions. Recent efforts to study the response to these emissions declines has not addressed their impact on the ocean, yet ocean carbon absorption is particularly susceptible to changing atmospheric carbon concentrations. Here, we use ensembles of simulations conducted with an Earth system model to explore the potential detection of COVID‐related emissions reductions in the partial pressure difference in carbon dioxide between the surface ocean and overlying atmosphere (ΔpCO(2)), a quantity that is regularly measured. We find a unique fingerprint in global‐scale ΔpCO(2) that is attributable to COVID, though the fingerprint is difficult to detect in individual model realizations unless we force the model with a scenario that has four times the observed emissions reduction.