To know whether we are complying with emission treaties, all CO 2 must be traceable. Incomplete bookkeeping recently sent scientists on a search in the Greenland Sea. Their research is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.

"We thought we had control," Professor Are Olsen says. "But we have lost it."

As so often before, the research leader from the Bjerknes Centre and the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen is talking about CO 2 . But this time, uncontrolled emissions are not the cause of worry. His discouragement concerns our incomplete surveillance of CO 2 , a gas as ethereal as a ghost.

"We" is the population of the Earth, and we have lost track of where the CO 2 we emit ends up.

When we release CO 2 to the atmosphere by burning oil and coal, some CO 2 stays in the air, while the rest is taken up by the ocean and the vegetation on land. It is important to keep track of the distribution among the recipients.

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