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Wanninkhof & McGillis 1999
Wanninkhof, R. and McGillis, W.R. (1999). A cubic relationship between air-sea CO2 exchange and wind speed. Geophysical Research Letters 26: doi: 10.1029/1999GL900363. issn: 0094-8276.

Using recent laboratory and field results we explore the possibility of a cubic relationship between gas exchange and instantaneous (or short-term) wind speed, and its impact on global air-sea fluxes. The theoretical foundation for such a dependency is based on retardation of gas transfer at low to intermediate winds by surfactants, which are ubiquitous in the world's oceans, and bubble-enhanced transfer at higher winds. The proposed cubic relationship shows a weaker dependence of gas transfer at low wind speed and a significantly stronger dependence at high wind speed than previous relationships. A long-term relationship derived from such a dependence, combined with the monthly CO2 climatology of Takahashi [1997>, leads to an increase in the global annual oceanic CO2 uptake from 1.4 Gigaton C yr-1 to 2.2 Gigaton C yr-1. Although a cubic relationship fits within global bomb-14C oceanic uptake constraints, additional checks are warranted, particularly at high wind speeds where the enhancement is most pronounced. ¿ 1999 American Geophysical Union

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Abstract

Keywords
Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Air/sea constituent fluxes (3339, 4504)
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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