My rant below is not about where the Co2 is coming from. But why the daily data should be available. If there are papers out there telling us that Co2 production from photochemsitry is about 23 times stronger than CO production from photochemistry then i think it reasonable to see this. We are only ever shown bits that seem to enhance the alarmism BUT NEVER the bits where we can question it.
Interesting papers.
Searched up photochemistry Carbon Monoxide and Carbon dioxide.
Co2 is generated 23 times more than CO in coastal estuaries.
The study did not extend to open ocean. It does however make mention of the global hotspots of estuarine Co2 and CO hotspots. The Pearl River estuary in China (South China Sea) and the Atlantic Bight USA
....however, some coastal systems, such as the terrestrially influenced South Atlantic Bight (USA) and the Pearl River estuary (China), have been reported as seasonal sources of CO2 to the atmosphere....
UV is instrumental in the production of Co2 and CO. And we fully aware on what filters UV. OZONE! And we know that the sun UV output also varies quiet markedly
The abstract in full
Abstract.
The photochemical oxidation of oceanic dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) has been estimated to be a significant process with global photoproduction transforming petagrams of DOC to inorganic carbon annually. To further quantify the importance of these two photoproducts in coastal DOC cycling, 38 paired apparent quantum yield (AQY) spectra for CO and CO2 were determined at three locations along the coast of Georgia, USA over the course of one year. The AQY spectra for CO2 were considerably more varied than CO. CO AQY spectra exhibited a seasonal shift in spectrally integrated (260 nm–490 nm) AQY from higher efficiencies in the autumn to less efficient photoproduction in the summer. While full-spectrum photoproduction rates for both products showed positive correlation with pre-irradiation UV-B sample absorption (i.e. chromophoric dissolved organic matter, CDOM) as expected, we found no correlation between AQY and CDOM for either product at any site. Molecular size, approximated with pre-irradiation spectral slope coef- ficients, and aromatic content, approximated by the specific ultraviolet absorption of the pre-irradiated samples, were also not correlated with AQY in either data set. The ratios of CO2 to CO photoproduction determined using both an AQY model and direct production comparisons were 23.2 ± 12.5 and 22.5 ± 9.0, respectively. Combined, both products represent a loss of 2.9 to 3.2 % of the DOC delivered to the estuaries and inner shelf of the South Atlantic Bight yearly, and 6.4 to 7.3 % of the total annual degassing of CO2 to the atmosphere. This result suggests that direct photochemical production of CO and CO2 is a small, yet significant contributor to both DOC cycling and CO2 gas exchange in this coastal system.
And from the conclusion this bit. ...The average CO2 to CO photoproduction ratio for this study was ∼23....
Conclusion The extensive nature of this AQY data set contributes improved constraints for the spatiotemporal variability of both CO and CO2 photochemical production in the subtropical coastal ocean. It represents a longer-term examination of coastal CO photochemistry than the much more common transect studies published to date. The photochemical effi- ciency of CO production over all Georgia coastal estuarine environments studied varied annually within 21.7 % with a seasonal pattern. The variation observed in our CO2 data set is overall larger than that for CO. The Sapelo Sound samples that should be most representative of offshore coastal waters, however, showed a CO2 photoproduction constrained to within 9.6 % year-round. The average CO2 to CO photoproduction ratio for this study was ∼23. Together, these findings allow for better constraints on estimates of the direct in- fluence of photochemistry in coastal organic carbon models. Our calculations indicate the potential for direct mineralization of DOC by photochemical oxidation to inorganic gases in the SABi from 2.9 % to 3.3 %. This suggests that photochemical oxidation in estuarine and coastal environments is a small but potentially significant contributor to coastal carbon cycling. Acknowledgements. The authors would like to thank the GCELTER for sampling assistance and S. B. Joye, and K. S. Hunter for the use of the dissolved organic carbon data. The authors would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers whose constructive comments helped to improve this paper. This work was supported by NASA grant number NNX07AD85G, as part of the North American Carbon Project.
