Monday June 27, 2022
Science Alert —
The oceans are one of our planet’s most important carbon sinks, with currently around 39,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide locked away – that’s around 50 times more than what’s circulating in the atmosphere right now.
However, we can’t rely on this carbon capture and storage to solve our climate crisis problem, because we’re producing too much excess CO2 too quickly.
What’s more, a new study suggests that the deep ocean isn’t able to hold anywhere near as much carbon as previously thought.
Scientists looked at the cycle of carbon as it’s sucked up by microscopic plants living near the surface of the water that then drift down to the seabed.
Based on new particle tracking models, it turns out that this process is ‘leakier’ and retains less carbon long-term than earlier estimates.