The oceans play a major role in the carbon dioxide cycle in the atmosphere, and the determination of the carbon carried in it is very important to understand the change of the Earth’s climate. However, the widespread measurement and control of peripheral operations represents a challenge to scientists.
Researchers of the Institute of Ocean Research and Air Country (MBARI) and scientists from Florida State University developed a new way to analyze satellite data to better predict carbon quantities published in the magazine “Geophysical Research”.
The researchers relied on a group of advanced technologies on a research site off the coast of Central California, to monitor the deep sea floor. The abundant data of this long -term observatory has helped researchers understand how carbon moves from the surface to the depths of the seas.
Ocean currents can carry plant plankton hundreds of kilometers away from the beach, and marine organisms consume those carbon carriers across the food network as food and waste.
And to the bottom, the dead plant plankton and carbon -rich waste fall into the depths, as part of a biological pump capable of holding carbon in the depths of the seas for thousands of years.
The team adopted a model derived from satellites, drawing a map of plankton pillars and its emission to the surface oceanic cycle after the rise of coastal oceans, and the model was initially designed to track hot vital foci where marine creatures gather.
Instead of relying on the ocean color data to estimate carbon emissions, this new approach is integrating the role of animal plankton, and the degree of its prosperity by the peripheral currents. This method has done well as models based on the color of the ocean or long -term monitoring of the carbon carbon on the deep sea floor.
The success of this method shows the possibility of representing carbon exporting a good representation of space without the need for the color of the ocean, using the plankton model and peripheral currents picked up with satellites.
These results offer new visions of the factors that control the export of carbon, how it is represented from space, and its spatial and temporal patterns in a fertile surrounding area.
A complex network of physical and biological factors affects the carbon cycle in the oceans. The use of satellite data on winds and currents shows promising potential to estimate carbon emissions in the ocean, providing a complementary perspective of models that use visible ocean color from space.
The ocean and its living organisms are an essential part of the carbon cycle on Earth. Carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, and transforms marine organisms into organic materials that later dive into the depths, and this can be locked in the atmosphere in the depths of the ocean, a process known as “carbon export”.
The microorganisms similar to plants are transformed into the surface water of the carbon dioxide into organic carbon through the optical acting process. Scientists can use satellite ocean colors data to estimate plant plankton productivity.
Since the direct measurements of carbon emissions are rare, scientists were forced to rely on satellite and satellite data to understand large -scale patterns in the relationship between the ocean and carbon.
“We urgently need tools to monitor the relationship between the ocean and carbon on a global scale,” said Monic Messi, chief researcher and leader of the Data Integration and Oceanic Institute at the Maryland Research Institute, said.
The oceans are the “lung of the planet”, as it produces 50% of the oxygen that we need, and it absorbs 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions, and captures 90% of the additional heat resulting from these emissions, and thus is a vital barrier against the effects of climate change.