Friday March 17, 2023
PhysOrg —
A team of graduate students and researchers from the University of Miami is navigating through the northern Atlantic Ocean on an international research voyage to learn more about how the ocean is changing through time.
The team of 11 ocean researchers and seven students, as well as one alumna, from the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and its Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) is joining scientists from 15 organizations across the country. The group of about 60 scientists is collecting water samples from a variety of depths and locations in the Atlantic to gain insight about how the ocean’s chemistry is evolving as water temperatures warm.
The cruise is part of the GO-SHIP program, which seeks to monitor the transformation of our oceans as a result of climate change.
“This is one of the most important climate change projects that these two agencies are involved in,” said Chris Langdon, a professor of marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School, and one of the principal investigators for this cruise. “Approximately 25 percent of all the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere each year dissolves into the ocean and it’s critical to know if that amount is changing, because the earth would be warmer today if the oceans were not absorbing that much carbon dioxide.”