We may have been underestimating the effectiveness of the ocean’s carbon sinking abilities. In fact, the oceans are absorbing twice as much carbon than we previously thought. The big blue waters that cover most of our planet absorb billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide yearly, scientists said. They play an essential role in regulating how much of the greenhouse gas is in the atmosphere. And now a new study by a team of scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) suggests our ocean’s “biological pump” has been absorbing double the amount of carbon than we’d known.
On land, trees absorb the gas to use it for photosynthesis. In the ocean, phytoplankton does the same thing to produce food and energy to survive. When microscopic organisms get eaten by zooplankton or die, their remnants get pulled deeper into the depths of the ocean, taking their carbon stores along with them. As they sink to the bottom, they become buried in sediment or eaten by more massive marine creatures.
This simple natural process helps eliminate around a third of the CO2 emitted through human activity. However, the WHOI scientists believe the process is pulling a lot more than that. They came to this conclusion by re-evaluating the way the euphotic zone is calculated. The Euphotic region is the section of the upper ocean layer penetrable by sunlight. Read more…
