Carbon in the Northern South China Sea

Previous studies have emphasized that both DOC and POC play important roles in biogeochemical processes and cycles of carbon and other bio-reactive 

1 Dissolved Organic Carbon and Particulate Organic Carbon 

The horizontal and vertical distributions of POC resembled the pattern of DOC distributions. The concentrations of POC ranged from 1.6 to 4.5 

Similar seasonal patterns have also been documented at BATS and HOT (Bates et ah, 1998). The fluxes are less than —0.7 mol C/(m -yr) found at HOT or —0.3 to —0.6 mol C/(m yr) found at BATS (Bates et al., 1998). The lower values at SEATS can be attributed to the higher sea surface temperature at SEATS, which increases Pco n the surface water and depresses the capacity for CO2 uptake, and the general upwelling circulation in the SCS (Chao et al., 1996b Chen et al., 2001). Finally, if the estimated annual sea-to-air CO2 flux at SEATS is extrapolated to the entire SCS (3.5x10 km ), it could take up (4.5 3.3)-(9.6 7.7) TgC/yr, i.e., only about (0.20 0.15)% to (0.44 0.35)% of the total CO2 uptake by the global oceans ( 2.2 PgC/yr). These values 

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