Abstract
The coastal ocean contributes to regulating atmospheric greenhouse gas
concentrations by taking up carbon dioxide (CO2) and releasing nitrous
oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4). Major advances have improved our
understanding of the coastal air-sea exchanges of these three gasses
since the first phase of the Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment and
Processes (RECCAP in 2013), but a comprehensive view that integrates the
three gasses at the global scale is still lacking. In this second phase
(RECCAP2), we quantify global coastal ocean fluxes of CO2, N2O and CH4
using an ensemble of global gap-filled observation-based products and
ocean biogeochemical models. The global coastal ocean is a net sink of
CO2 in both observational products and models, but the magnitude of the
median net global coastal uptake is ~60% larger in
models (-0.72 vs. -0.44 PgC/yr, 1998-2018, coastal ocean area of 77
million km2). We attribute most of this model-product difference to the
seasonality in sea surface CO2 partial pressure at mid- and
high-latitudes, where models simulate stronger winter CO2 uptake. The
global coastal ocean is a major source of N2O (+0.70 PgCO2-e /yr in
observational product and +0.54 PgCO2-e /yr in model median) and of CH4
(+0.21 PgCO2-e /yr in observational product), which offsets a
substantial proportion of the net radiative effect of coastal
\co uptake (35-58% in CO2-equivalents). Data products
and models need improvement to better resolve the spatio-temporal
variability and long term trends in CO2, N2O and CH4 in the global
coastal ocean.