NASA’s new Orbiting Carbon Observatory shows potential tectonically-induced CO2 input from the ocean?

Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Martin Hovland, Geophysiscist and Professor Emeritus, Center for Geobiology, University of Bergen, Norway

The newly released satellite OCO₂-data indicates that there is CO₂ input in tectonically active oceanic areas. This becomes evident by pairing seafloor topography and tectonic data with the recently published OCO₂-results. Thus, in the released OCO₂ dataset, showing the average atmospheric concentration of CO₂ over a period of about 6 weeks late in 2014, there are three curious, relatively week, but distinct CO₂-hotspots over oceanic regions:

1) The Timor CO₂-hotspot

2) the Fiji CO₂-hotspot, and

3) the Emperor CO₂-hotspot, see Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 Portions of the initial published OCO2 data, showing the locations of the three CO2-hotspots discussed herein. TH=Timor CO2-hotspot; FH=Fiji CO2-hotspot; EH=Emperor CO2-hotspot. They are all apparently associated with tectonically active processes on the underlying seafloor.

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