Understanding climate
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Southern Ocean plays key role in marine carbon distribution

Carbon composition is a combined signal of ocean circulation and local biological and chemical processes, a new study shows, drawing special attention to the Southern Ocean.

Sediment cores
Sediment cores. Photo: Hannes Grobe [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons. 

Written by Anne Morée from the Bjerknes Centre and the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen.

The past climate system can be studied using marine sediment records like the ones in the picture. Often, records of an isotope of carbon (13C) are used. Anne Morée, Jörg Schwinger and Christoph Heinze show in their latest article that scientists should interpret 13C records as a combined signal of ocean circulation and local biological and chemical processes, and that the Southern Ocean plays a key role in setting the marine 13C distribution. 

Reference

Anne L. Morée, Jörg Schwinger, and Christoph Heinze: Southern Ocean controls of the vertical marine δ13C gradient – a modelling study. Biogeosciences, 15, 7205-7223, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-7205-2018