Explaining Glacial‐Interglacial CO 2 Changes Requires Multiple Ocean Processes

Abstract

Changes in deep ocean carbon played a significant role in atmospheric CO2 variations during glacial‐interglacial climate cycles. However, ocean carbon is a complex system that can reflect differing influences of physical and biological processes. To address this complexity, the ocean's dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) pool is divided into different components that depend on their origin and formation processes (Figure 1). Understanding the behavior of each component to perturbations can help us improve the quantification of changes in DIC during glacial inceptions and terminations, and explain associated atmospheric CO2 changes (Khatiwala et al., 2019).