News Releases
Researchers Studying Ocean Transform Faults, Describe a Previously Unknown Part of the Geological Carbon Cycle
Woods Hole, Mass. – Studying a rock is like reading a book. The rock has a story to tell, says Frieder Klein, an associate scientist in the Marine Chemistry & […]
Read MoreStudy Reveals How Rivers Regulate Global Carbon Cycle
Humans concerned about climate change are working to find ways of capturing excess carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the Earth. But Nature has its own methods for the removal and long-term storage of carbon, including the world’s river systems, which transport decaying organic material and eroded rock from land to the ocean.
While river transport of carbon to the ocean is not on a scale that will bail humans out of our CO2 problem, we don’t actually know how much carbon the world’s rivers routinely flush into the ocean – an important piece of the global carbon cycle.
But in a study published May 14 in the journal Nature, scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) calculated the first direct estimate of how much and in what form organic carbon is exported to the ocean by rivers. The estimate will help modelers predict how the carbon export from global rivers may shift as Earth’s climate changes.
Read MoreSeafloor bacteria are multi-tasking with the carbon cycle
Scientists have long known that microorganisms can use one of two different methods to convert carbon dioxide into a form that living things can use for energy. What they didn’t […]
Read MoreWHOI Awarded Funding to Support Research and Development of Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal
WHOI researchers are among the 17 projects that have been awarded funding by NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program on behalf of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP).
Read MoreReview Evaluates the Evidence for an Intensifying Indian Ocean Water Cycle
Report Calls for Better Integration of Observations, Models, and Paleo Proxies
The Indian Ocean has been warming much more than other ocean basins over the last 50-60 years. While temperature changes […]
Read MoreClimate Change Can Destabilize the Global Soil Carbon Reservoir, New Study Finds
The vast reservoir of carbon that is stored in soils probably is more sensitive to destabilization from climate change than has previously been assumed, according to a new study by […]
Read MoreThe $500 billion question: what’s the value of studying the ocean’s biological carbon pump?
A new study puts an economic value on the benefit of research to improve knowledge of the biological carbon pump and reduce the uncertainty of ocean carbon sequestration estimates.
Read MoreThe ocean’s ‘biological pump’ captures more carbon than expected
Scientists have long known that the ocean plays an essential role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere, but a new study from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) shows that the efficiency of the ocean’s “biological carbon pump” has been drastically underestimated, with implications for future climate assessments.
Read MoreOrganic Carbon Hides in Sediments, Keeping Oxygen in Atmosphere
A new study from researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Harvard University may help settle a long-standing question—how small amounts of organic carbon become locked away in […]
Read MoreMicrobes May Act as Gatekeepers of Earth’s Deep Carbon
Two years ago an international team of scientists visited Costa Rica’s subduction zone, where the ocean floor sinks beneath the continent and volcanoes tower above the surface. They wanted to […]
Read MoreMountain Erosion May Add Carbon Dioxide to Atmosphere
Scientists have long known that steep mountain ranges can draw carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere as erosion exposes new rock, it also starts a chemical reaction between minerals on hill slopes and CO2 in the air, weathering the rock and using CO2 to produce carbonate minerals like calcite.
Read MoreRiver Buries Permafrost Carbon at Sea
As temperatures rise, some of the carbon dioxide stored in Arctic permafrost meets an unexpected fate—burial at sea. As many as 2.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year are swept along by a single river system into Arctic Ocean sediment, according to a new study led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers and published today in Nature. This process locks away the greenhouse gas and helps stabilize the earth’s CO2 levels over time, and it may help scientists better predict how natural carbon cycles will interplay with the surge of CO2 emissions due to human activities.
“The erosion of permafrost carbon is very significant,” says WHOI Associate Scientist Valier Galy, a co-author of the study. “Over thousands of years, this process is sequestering CO2 away from the atmosphere in a way that amounts to fairly large carbon stocks. If we can understand how this process works, we can predict how it will respond as the climate changes.”
Permafrost—the permanently frozen ground found in the Arctic and Antarctic and in some alpine regions—is known to hold billions of tons of organic material, including vast stores of CO2. Amid concerns about rising Arctic temperatures and their impact on permafrost, many researchers have directed their efforts to studying the permafrost carbon cycle—the processes through which the carbon circulates between the atmosphere, the soil and surface (the biosphere), and the sea. Yet how this cycle works and how it responds to the warming, changing climate remains poorly understood.
Galy and his colleagues from Durham University, the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, the NERC Radiocarbon Facility, Stockholm University, and the Universite Paris-Sud set out to characterize the carbon cycle in one particular piece of the Arctic landscape—northern Canada’s Mackenzie River, the largest river flowing into the Arctic Ocean from North America and that ocean’s greatest source of sediment. The researchers hypothesized that the Mackenzie’s muddy water might erode thawing permafrost along its path and wash that biosphere-derived material and the CO2 within it into the ocean, preventing the release of that CO2 into the atmosphere.
Read MoreSwirling Currents Deliver Phytoplankton Carbon to Ocean Depths
A new paper published March 26 in the journal Science that highlights the significant role that swirling currents, or eddies, play in pushing non-sinking carbon to ocean depths.
Read MoreNew Study by WHOI Scientists Provides Baseline Measurements of Carbon in Arctic Ocean
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have conducted a new study to measure levels of carbon at various depths in the Arctic Ocean. The study, recently published in […]
Read MoreLong-Term Carbon Storage in Ganges Basin May Portend Global Warming Worsening
Global warming could destabilize the pool of carbon in the Ganges-Brahmaputra basin and similar places on Earth, potentially increasing the rate of CO2 release into the atmosphere.
Read More“Hot-Bunking” Bacterium Recycles Iron to Boost Ocean Metabolism
In the vast ocean where an essential nutrient?iron?is scarce, a marine bacterium that launches the ocean food web survives by using a remarkable biochemical trick: It recycles iron.
Read MoreNovel Ocean-Crust Mechanism Could Affect World’s Carbon Budget
The Earth is constantly manufacturing new crust, spewing molten magma up along undersea ridges at the boundaries of tectonic plates. The process is critical to the planet?s metabolism, including the cycle of underwater life and the delicate balance of carbon in the ocean and atmosphere. Now, scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have observed ocean crust forming in an entirely unexpected way?one that may influence those cycles of life and carbon and, in turn, affect the much-discussed future of the world?s climate.
Read MoreCarbon Acts Like Rustoleum Around Hydrothermal Vents
The cycling of iron throughout the oceans has been an area of intense research for the last two decades. Oceanographers have spent a lot of time studying what has been […]
Read MoreEarth’s Ability to Absorb Increased Carbon Emissions May Be Limited
The ability of both land and sea to absorb increased emissions of carbon dioxide is limited, according to a recent study using a new computer model of Earth’s climate that […]
Read MoreVERTIGO: Carbon Cycling in the Twilight Zone
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and their international colleagues will be at sea off Hawaii in June trying to learn more about the ocean’s ability to store atmospheric carbon […]
Read MoreFossil Records Show Methane in Seafloor Sediments Released During Periods of Rapid Climate Warming
Scientists have found new evidence indicating that during periods of rapid climate warming methane gas has been released periodically from the seafloor in intense eruptions. In a study published in the current issue of the journal Science, Kai-Uwe Hinrichs and colleagues Laura Hmelo and Sean Sylva of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) provide a direct link between methane reservoirs in coastal marine sediments and the global carbon cycle, an indicator of global warming and cooling.
Read MoreFor microscopic organisms, ocean currents act as ‘expressway’ to deeper depths, study finds
New research shows how tiny plant-like organisms hitch a ride on ocean currents to reach darker and deeper depths, where they impact carbon cycling and microbial dynamics in the subtropical oceans.
Read MoreVitamin B12 adaptability in Antarctic algae has implications for climate change
Woods Hole, Mass. — Vitamin B12 deficiency in people can cause a slew of health problems and even become fatal. Until now, the same deficiencies were thought to impact certain […]
Read MoreStudy says ice age could help predict oceans’ response to global warming
Woods Hole, MA – A team of scientists led by a Tulane University oceanographer and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has found that deposits deep under the ocean floor […]
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