Understanding and predicting trends in north Atlantic CO2 uptake

To determine the maximum carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions society must commit to, to remain below a given atmospheric CO2 threshold, the scientific community must robustly quantify what proportion of human emitted CO2 will be taken up by the land and marine carbon reservoirs. The North Atlantic Ocean is the most intense marine sink of anthropogenic CO2 on the planet, accounting for about a fifth of the global oceanic anthropogenic CO2 uptake, despite covering just 15% of the global ocean area. Carefully assessing uncertainties, we quantify the real-world trend in North Atlantic CO2 uptake over the past two decades. Comparing this to results from state-of-the-art climate models, we find that models are systematically underestimating the observed CO2 uptake trend. By performing a set of targeted climate model simulations, we diagnose and account for this bias, and produce the first set of observation-informed future ocean CO2 uptake predictions.