$500 billion question: What's the value of studying the ocean's
biological carbon pump?

Date:
September 10, 2020
Source:
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Summary:
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.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The ocean plays an invaluable role in capturing carbon dioxide (CO2)
from the atmosphere, taking in somewhere between five to 12 gigatons
(billion tons) annually. Due to limited research, scientists aren't
sure exactly how much carbon is captured and stored -- or sequestered --
by the ocean each year or how increasing CO2 emissions will affect this
process in the future.


==========================================================================
A new paper published in the journal Science of the Total Environment from
the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) 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.

Using a climate economy model that factors in the social costs of carbon
and reflects future damages expected as a consequence of a changing
climate, lead author Di Jin of WHOI's Marine Policy Center places the
value of studying ocean carbon sequestration at $500 billion.

"The paper lays out the connections between the benefit of scientific
research and decision making," says Jin. "By investing in science, you
can narrow the range of uncertainty and improve a social cost-benefit assessment." Better understanding of the ocean's carbon sequestration
capacity will lead to more accurate climate models, providing policymakers
with the information they need to establish emissions targets and make
plans for a changing climate, Jin adds.

With co-authors Porter Hoagland and Ken Buesseler, Jin builds a case for
a 20- year scientific research program to measure and model the ocean's biological carbon pump, the process by which atmospheric carbon dioxide
is transported to the deep ocean through the marine food web.

The biological carbon pump is fueled by tiny plant-like organisms floating
on the ocean surface called phytoplankton, which consume carbon dioxide
in the process of photosynthesis. When the phytoplankton die or are
eaten by larger organisms, the carbon-rich fragments and fecal matter
sink deeper into the ocean, where they are eaten by other creatures or
buried in seafloor sediments, which helps decrease atmospheric carbon
dioxide and thus reduces global climate change.

Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, a result of human activity
such as burning fossil fuels, warms the planet by trapping heat from
the sun and also dissolves into seawater, lowering the pH of the ocean,
a phenomenon known as ocean acidification. A warmer, more acidic ocean
could weaken the carbon pump, causing atmospheric temperatures to rise --
or it could get stronger, with the opposite effect.

"When we try to predict what the world is going to look like, there's
great uncertainty," says Buesseler, a WHOI marine chemist. "Not only do
we not know how big this pump is, we don't know whether it will remove
more or less carbon dioxide in the future. We need to make progress to
better understand where we're headed, because the climate affects all of humanity." Buesseler added that efforts like WHOI's Ocean Twilight Zone initiative and NASA's EXport Processes in the global Ocean from RemoTe
Sensing (EXPORTS) program are making important strides in understanding
the ocean's role in the global carbon cycle, but this research needs to
be vastly scaled up in order to develop predictive models such as those
used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Current
IPCC models do not account for change in the ocean's ability to take up
carbon, which Buesseler said affects their accuracy.

Though the paper's assessment doesn't account for the cost of a global
research program, Buesseler said that investment would be a small fraction
of the $500 billion expected benefit. The authors warn that this savings
could also be viewed as a cost to society if the research does not lead
to policy decisions that mitigate the effects of climate change.

"Just like a weather forecast that helps you decide whether or not
to bring an umbrella, you use your knowledge and experience to make a
decision based on science," Jin says. "If you hear it's going to rain
and you don't listen, you will get wet."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Woods_Hole_Oceanographic_Institution. Note: Content may be edited for
style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Di Jin, Porter Hoagland, Ken O. Buesseler. The value of scientific
research on the ocean's biological carbon pump. Science of The Total
Environment, 2020; 749: 141357 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141357 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200910130414.htm

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