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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 6, NUMBER 3, MARCH 1993

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS...
THE CARBON CYCLE: CORAL REEFS

Item #d93mar71

"Coral Reefs: Sources or Sinks of Atmospheric CO₂," J.R. Ware (Dept. Oceanog., Univ. Hawaii, Honolulu HI 96822), S.V. Smith, M.L. Reakakudla, Coral Reefs, 11(3), 127-130, Sep. 1992.

Although it has frequently been thought that coral reefs function as sinks of atmospheric CO₂, the precipitation of calcium is accompanied by a shift of pH that results in the release of CO₂. Estimates that the CO₂ released by reefs amounts to 0.4-1.4% of the current anthropogenic production due to fossil fuel combustion.

Item #d93mar72

"Return of the Coral Reef Hypothesis: Basin to Shelf Partitioning of CaCO3 and Its Effect on Atmospheric CO₂," B.N. Opdyke (Dept. Geol. Sci., Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109), J.C.G. Walker, Geology, 20(8), 733-736, Aug. 1992.

Differences in the rate of coral reef carbonate deposition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene may account for the recently recognized Quaternary fluctuations in CO₂. A simple numerical model of the global carbon cycle replicates the 80 ppm atmospheric CO₂ fluctuations observed in the Vostok ice core for the Quaternary, as well as approximate depth changes in percent carbonate of sediments measured in the Pacific ocean over the same time interval.