Significance of the oceanic CO2 sink for national carbon accounts

Background  

Under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea (1982), each participating country maintains exclusive economic and environmental rights within the oceanic region extending 200 nm from its coastline, known as the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Although the ocean within each EEZ has a vast capacity to absorb anthropogenic CO₂ and therefore potentially be used as a carbon sink, it is not mentioned within the Kyoto Protocol most likely due to inadequate quantitative estimates. Here, I use two methods to estimate the anthropogenic CO₂ storage and uptake for a typically large EEZ (Australia).