Page "Carbon sink" Paragraph 54

According to a report in Nature magazine, ( November, 2009 ) the first year-by-year accounting of this mechanism during the industrial era, and the first time scientists have actually measured it, suggests " the oceans are struggling to keep up with rising emissions — a finding with potentially wide implications for future climate.

" With total world emissions from fossil fuels growing rapidly, the proportion of fossil-fuel emissions absorbed by the oceans since 2000 may have declined by as much as 10 %, indicating that over time the ocean will become " a less efficient sink of manmade carbon.

" Samar Khatiwala, an oceanographer at Columbia University concludes that the studies suggest " we cannot count on these sinks operating in the future as they have in the past, and keep on subsidizing our ever-growing appetite for fossil fuels.

" However, a recent paper by Wolfgang Knorr indicates that the fraction of absorbed by carbon sinks has not changed since 1850 .< ref >