In a TEDx presentation. Peter B. de Menocal, the eleventh president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution , talked about ways to enhance processes so the ocean pulls more carbon out of the atmosphere to help slow climate change.
According to the video, if all of airborne human CO2 emissions were to be transferred by some process to the deep ocean, it would only increase ocean carbon content by 1%.
The ocean is like a big carbonated beverage. Although it doesn’t fizz, it has about 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere. So, for taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it someplace where it won’t continue to warm the planet, the ocean is the single biggest place it can go.
In particualr, the twilight zone is this vast realm of the ocean below the sunlit surfaces down about 1.000 meters. It’s about 1/2 a mile thick like two Empire State Buldings stacked on top of one another. It extends around 2/3 of our globe.
According to the video, new tools, new ways of observing, new technologies, autonomous underwater vehicles, can be ocean observatories, robots who go down to deep and find critters in their natural habitat, can help to study the twilight zone.
The rises in temperature and climate fingerptints across the planet are due to Rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Scientists are working so diligently on this becuase the oceans may be able to help.
