carbon

• Four-year project will investigate whether storing CO₂ in the ocean is environmentally safe, socially acceptable and economically viable
• Oceans offer huge potential to act as enhanced sinks for atmospheric CO₂ and support global climate targets

Our ocean offers a potential buffer against climate change. It takes up and stores carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a process known as the biological carbon pump. Without life in the ocean providing this pump scientists think atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could be 50% higher than they are even now.

This week, scientists from the NOC attended the annual ICOS Science Conference, which brought together over 1000 researchers working to measure greenhouse gas emissions across Europe.

The first large-scale synthesis of the carbon budget in the shallow seas of the North West European shelf estimates that around 40% of the carbon entering the seas comes from the atmosphere and the rest comes from the land.

New research, published in Science, shows sinking organic particles known as “marine snow” are breaking apart at high rates in the ocean.

On Sunday 13 October the RRS Discovery sailed from Southampton to Punta Arenas, in Chile, as part of the annual Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) research expedition.

On Friday 14 April the RRS Discovery will leave Southampton for a research expedition to the Porcupine Abyssal Plain sustained ocean observatory (PAP-SO) in the Northeast Atlantic.

A key piece of the carbon cycle puzzle has been solved by scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), with the discovery of the mechanism underpinning more efficient carbon transfer in low oxygen zones.

Leading scientists from across the world travelled to NOC for the first TOMCAT working group meeting.

This group aims to take advantage of the fast development of optical technologies to help progress understanding of the ocean carbon cycle, which determines CO2 levels in the ocean and atmosphere, using large data sets describing particles in the ocean.

The world’s first ‘real world’ deep-water controlled experiment simulating emission from a submerged carbon dioxide storage reservoir is to take place in the North Sea, with the aim of further verifying the safety of offshore carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture and storage (CCS).