the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Technical Note: The impact of industrial activity on the amount of atmospheric O2
Mark O. Battle
Raine Raynor
Stephen Kesler
Ralph Keeling
Abstract. Concurrent measurements of atmospheric O2 and CO2 amount fractions have been used for decades now to estimate fluxes of carbon to and from the oceans and the land biosphere. The equations used in these estimates explicitly include fossil fuel combustion but largely ignore fluxes of O2 associated with the refining of metals and other industrially important elements. Here, we quantify the O2 fluxes associated with the processing of iron, aluminum and copper. We also consider the potential impact of sulfur. We find that inclusion of the fluxes due to metals leads to an increased estimate of ocean carbon uptake in the years 2000–2010 of 
Pg a-1 with a corresponding decrease in estimated land uptake. A rough estimate of sulfur chemistry during fossil fuel combustion also increases ocean uptake but by a much smaller amount. These corrections are small compared to existing estimates of the fluxes and their uncertainties ((2.27 ± 0.60) and (1.05 ± 0.84) Pg a-1 for ocean and land respectively (Keeling and Manning, 2014)) but should be employed in future analyses.
Mark O. Battle et al.
Status: open (until 19 Apr 2023)
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RC1: 'Review of “Technical Note: The impact of industrial activity on the amount of atmospheric O2” by M. Battle and colleagues', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Mar 2023
reply
This manuscript presents an assessment of the impact of iron, aluminium and copper processing on global-scale atmospheric O2 budgets that are commonly used for land-ocean carbon sink partitioning. Although the correction reported by the authors is small in comparison to the uncertainties of the ocean and land carbon sinks, since it is a bias it is nevertheless important and perhaps appears more significant when considering the magnitude of carbon budget system discrepancies, such as the ‘Budget Imbalance’ term of the Global Carbon Budget, for example.
I find this manuscript to be well-written, well-structured, succinct and informative; the subject matter is a good fit to this journal. I think the handling of uncertainties and acknowledgements of any omissions or simplifications where they occur is especially well-handled, despite the difficulty in assessing some of these. In particular, I am glad to see that the three significant figures of the USGS values have not been taken at face value, with more realistic estimates of uncertainty used instead.
I only have a few technical comments:
- The authors may wish to consider defining a few of the more common chemical formulae where they are first used, such as SO2, for the benefit of the interested reader who does not have a background in chemistry.
- Page 7, line 13. I believe the citation here should be Keeling et al. (1988), not Keeling et al. (1998).
- Although I don’t think it is a requirement, the authors may want to consider changing the spelling of aluminum to aluminium as per the journal in-house standards (and in accordance with IUPAC), for the benefit of international readers.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2022-765-RC1
Mark O. Battle et al.
Mark O. Battle et al.
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