Biogeosciences
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Articles | Volume 22, issue 16
Articles | Volume 22, issue 16
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-4187-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-4187-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 22, issue 16
Research article
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26 Aug 2025
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 26 Aug 2025

Southern Hemisphere tree rings as proxies to reconstruct Southern Ocean upwelling

Christian Lewis, Rachel Corran, Sara E. Mikaloff-Fletcher, Erik Behrens, Rowena Moss, Gordon Brailsford, Andrew Lorrey, Margaret Norris, and Jocelyn Turnbull

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Editorial statement
This study combines an impressive dataset of tree ring radiocarbon measurements to quantify the balance between upwelling-related CO2 degassing from and CO2 uptake by the Southern Ocean, which is a crucial flux of of carbon between atmosphere and ocean and an important component of our climate system. These results benefit the broad climatology community both for its approach and for its important conclusions about the latitudinal variability in CO2 flux in the Southern Ocean.
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Short summary
The Southern Ocean carbon sink is a balance between two opposing forces: CO2 absorption at mid-latitudes and CO2 outgassing at high latitudes. Radiocarbon analysis can be used to constrain the latter, as upwelling waters outgas old CO2, diluting atmospheric radiocarbon content. We present tree-ring radiocarbon measurements from Aotearoa / New Zealand and Chile. We show that low radiocarbon in Aotearoa / New Zealand’s Motu Ihupuku / Campbell Island is linked to outgassing in the critical Antarctic Southern Zone.
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