LAUSR

Abstract The Southern Ocean is a globally important carbon sink region. However, the austral coastal zones are usually not considered in global estimations due to their general undersampling and large regional dynamics. Thus, estimations of carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean may differ considerably from current values, i.e., without accounting for coastal regions. Here, we conducted a case study in the Gerlache Strait, an ecologically important Antarctic coastal zone. We show that the net sea–air CO2 flux (FCO2) in the strait may reach the same or greater magnitudes than those in large open sea regions around Antarctica during summer, despite having a much smaller area. A large mean FCO2 of –31 ± 19 mmol m−2 d–1 was observed in the strong CO2 sink years (i.e., FCO2