Abstract:

With the recognition of the issue of potential global climate change caused by the continuing increase in atmospheric CO2，scientists are seeking for the method of how to retard rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2, while they are probing for the global carbon cycling. After discussing some possible approaches, this study emphasizes on exploring the effectiveness of sequestration of CO2 in the ocean as one of the options. A basinwide ocean general circulation model of the North Pacific is used to study the behaviour of the sequestered CO2. A location is chosen in the North Pacific, and CO2 is artificially injected into different depths. Simulated results show that the sequestration effectiveness increases with increasing injection depth. Overall, if the injection depth exceeds 1 500 m, the sequestered CO2 in the ocean maintains over 95% of the injected CO2 at the end of the 50 years of continuous injection. If the injection depth exceeds 2 000 m, the impact of further increase in injection depth on the sequestration effectiveness becomes small, and the difference in effectiveness is less than 1% after 50 years.

Key words:

reduction of emission and increase of sink; carbon cycle; ocean disposal of CO2; the North Pacific;numerical simulation