A new study has highlighted the crucial role that sea ice across the Southern Ocean played in controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during times of past climate change, and could provide a critical resource for developing future climate change models.
A new study has highlighted the crucial role that sea ice across the Southern Ocean played in controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during times of past climate change, and could provide a critical resource for developing future climate change models.
For the study an international team of researchers, led by Keele University and including experts from the University of Exeter, demonstrated that seasonal growth and destruction of sea ice in a warming world enhances the amount of marine life present in the sea around Antarctica, which draws down carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in the deep ocean.
Having captured half of all human-related carbon that has entered the ocean to date, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica is crucial for regulating carbon dioxide levels resulting from human activity, so understanding the processes that determine its effectiveness as a carbon sink through time are crucial to reducing uncertainty in future climate change models.
To understand this process further, the researchers studied data relating to one period where atmospheric CO2 levels changed rapidly.
Read more at University of Exeter
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