Maciek Telszewski

Phone: +44 1603 591315
Fax: +44 (0)1603 591327
Email: M.Telszewski-atnospam-uea.ac.uk

Postal Address:
Laboratory for Global Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry,
School of Environmental Science,
University of East Anglia,
Norwich, Norfolk, U.K.
NR4 7TJ

current research | curriculum vitae | publications | carrer development plan (internal)

Current Research: Ocean-Atmosphere CO2 flux observations

The aim of this project is to better model, document and understand the flux of atmospheric carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the oceans. Globally, the ocean has so far absorbed about half of the fossil fuel CO2 emitted by human activity into the atmosphere. The oceanic sink for CO2 has therefore been, and will continue to be, of great importance in slowing the rate of global warming. However, the sink is not constant from year to year, and this variability is not well understood. Atmospheric measurements both of CO2 and oxygen seem to suggest that the oceans vary more than our models can currently account for. Surface ocean measurements in regions such as the North Atlantic also suggest that the ocean sink is changing over the last decade or so. However, there are insufficient measurements to document the changes over many regions of the oceans.

Satellite remote sensing measurements can cover the global ocean. It is not possible to directly measure the flux of CO2 from space, but we can measure many of the variables that the flux may depend on, for example surface temperature, chlorophyll concentrations, and wind speeds, and this offers the possibility that the CO2 flux can be reconstructed from satellite measurements. The aim of the project is to integrate such measurements, with the help of techniques such as neural networks and data assimilation into ocean carbon general circulation models, so that we can better understand CO2 fluxes in the recent past and predict them into the future.

This project contributes to the science objective 1 (Quantify feedbacks in the global carbon cycle) of GREENCYCLES.

Publications