The 7th International CO2 Conference Web Site - Long-Term Observations of CO2 Concentrations and its Isotope Ratio over the West

By Hitoshi Mukai

Air was collected systematically from 1995 to 2005 over the Pacific from 30S to 55N in latitude by ships-of-opportunity to monitor global trend of CO₂ concentration and its variation in the atmosphere. The monitoring results showed that three El Niño events during 10 years mostly affected regional and temporal variation of CO₂ growth rate and its budget. Variation of carbon isotope ratio showed that the CO₂ flux from terrestrial biosphere seemed to rapidly increase at that time, correlated with global temperature anomaly. Oxygen isotope ratio had increasing trend in this period, similar to the variation of temperature. Atmospheric ¹⁴CO₂ variation also seemed to be influenced by El Niño event.

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