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Cruising for Carbon
Why go to one of the windiest latitudes on Earth to learn about future global warming?
"We know that the ocean acts like a big CO2 sink, but just how much and how fast it absorbs CO2 is the essential question," says Ludovic Bariteau, a researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences – a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "And, understanding precisely how a greenhouse gas like CO2 moves through the environment is essential to understanding and predicting global warming."
Bariteau is on a six-week research cruise to measure how much greenhouse gas the Southern Ocean, surrounding Antarctica, swallows up during high winds and choppy seas. His research team, along with teams from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Hawaii, set sail from Punta Arenas, Chile, on Feb. 29.
Traveling aboard one of NOAA’s research ships, the Ronald H. Brown, scientists from the Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment are quantifying how much carbon dioxide and surface ozone the ocean absorbs. Their goal is to measure how fast the gases are transferred from the air into the water – information that will help carbon modelers improve estimates of CO2 fluxes on land and predictions of future atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, which will determine the rate of global warming.
The researchers will measure heat, surface ozone, dimethyl sulfide (a sulfur compound produced by the marine biosphere), and CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere and ocean, Bariteau explains.
"With these measurements, we can provide all field researchers, modelers, and remote-sensing specialists with the best possible meteorological reference data for improving carbon cycle science."
Measuring the rate of gas exchange between air and ocean also will help scientists predict how quickly acidification of the ocean will occur – a process that could threaten many marine organisms.
Bariteau is writing about his research in weekly posts until the team returns in mid-April.
Read Ludovic Bariteau's research postings >>
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