Every year, the transfer of carbon-rich particles across the shelf in the Kara and Barents Seas could trap as much as 3.6 million metric tons of CO2 in the deep Arctic ocean for thousands of years.
According to researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, this previously unknown route facilitates the biological carbon pump and ocean currents to absorb atmospheric CO2 on a scale amounting to Iceland’s total annual emissions.
The central Arctic Ocean has limited biological productivity relative to other oceans. This is because of the limited sunlight caused by the Polar Night or sea-ice cover, as well as the scarcity of available nutrients. Due to this, microalgae or phytoplankton in the upper water layers have less access to energy than their counterparts in other locations.
“Based on our measurements, we calculated that through this water-mass transport, more than 2,000 metric tons of carbon flow into the Arctic deep sea per day, the equivalent of 8,500 metric tons of atmospheric CO2. Extrapolated to the total annual amount revealed even 13.6 million metric tons of CO2, which is on the same scale as Iceland’s total annual emissions,” said Dr. Andreas Rogge, author of the study. This process would effectively remove roughly 30 percent more carbon from the atmosphere than previously believed.
Understanding transport and transformation processes within the carbon cycle are essential for creating global carbon dioxide budgets and projections for global warming. On the ocean’s surface, single-celled algae absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and sink towards the bottom upon death. When carbon is bound in this manner reaches the deep water, it stays there until overturning currents bring the water back to the ocean’s surface, which can take several thousand years in the Arctic. And if carbon is deposited in deep-sea sediments, it can be trapped there for millions of years, since only volcanic activity can release it.
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