Rainfall Makes the Ocean a Greater Carbon Sink

Rain changes the surface of the ocean and enhances carbon uptake. Credit: Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

‘Three decades ago, David Ho set up two pink, dinosaur-patterned children’s pools in the parking lot of a NOAA building in Miami, where afternoon thunderstorms were common. He was 22, freshly done with his undergraduate studies, and working as a technician at NOAA.

He filled both pools with water, added a gas tracer, and put a canopy over one pool as a control. Then, every day for several months, he waited for the downpour, getting drenched as he pulled up samples from each pool in glass syringes.

“It was pretty miserable,” he said, “but I got some interesting results.”

These early experiments showed that rain enhances the transfer velocity of carbon dioxide (CO2), or the efficiency with which it is transferred from air to water.’

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