Apparently the majority of British Merchant shipping have been equipped with automatic CO2 absorption gauges over the last ten years (How very convenient of the UK Gov: and allies. Not a lot of people aware of this)
The University of East Anglia have taken over 90,000 CO2 readings of sea water, as the ships crossed the oceans. The majority of readings were taken from the North Altlantic over the last ten years.
Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.
(I would like to see these absorption figures, over the last ten years)
Researchers said the findings, published in a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research, were surprising and worrying because there were grounds for believing that, given enough time, the ocean might well become saturated with CO2, - unable to absorb anymore. But this 50% drop in CO2 gas absorption by the Oceans is faster than expected.
If this actually happened it would leave all our gas emissions available to warm our atmosphere.
Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only half of it stays there; the rest goes into carbon sinks.
There are two major natural carbon sinks: the oceans and the land "biosphere". They are equivalent in size, each absorbing a quarter of all CO2 emissions.
END.
Found some URL's here, (all BBC??? :o) probably more to come, as story comes out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7053903.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3499500.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3617868.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/04/climate_change/html/greenhouse.stm