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The Arctic Ocean and adjacent continental shelf seas such as the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are particularly sensitive to long‐term change and low‐frequency modes of atmosphere‐ocean‐sea‐ice forcing. The cold, low salinity surface waters of the Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean are undersaturated with respect to CO 2 in the atmosphere and the region has the potential to take up atmospheric CO 2 , although presently suppressed by sea‐ice cover. Undersaturated seawater CO 2 conditions of the Arctic Ocean are maintained by export of water with low dissolved inorganic carbon content and modified by intense seasonal shelf primary production. Sea‐ice extent and volume in the Arctic Ocean has decreased over the last few decades, and we estimate that the Arctic Ocean sink for CO 2 has tripled over the last 3 decades (24 Tg yr −1 to 66 Tg yr −1 ) due to sea‐ice retreat with future sea‐ice melting enhancing air‐to‐sea CO 2 flux by ∼28% per decade.
Bates et al. (Fri,) studied this question.