Giorgio Dall’Olmo presents this weeks Atmospheric Physics seminar

Abstract:

The biological carbon pump is a complex set of physical and biogeochemical processes responsible for transferring organic carbon from the surface to the deep ocean. This transfer represents one of the largest fluxes of carbon in the Earth system and can modify atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and the climate of our planet. Unfortunately, large uncertainties remain about the magnitude of the biological pump and how its climate feedbacks could change in the future. Much of this uncertainty is due to difficulties in observing the ephemeral sub-surface processes that drive it. To overcome these difficulties, autonomous in-situ platforms can be used to collect sustained observations of the biological pump that are simply not feasible with traditional ship-based sampling techniques or moorings. In this seminar, I will present some recent discoveries about the biological pump based on data from Biogeochemical-Argo floats. I will conclude by discussing what we can expect from future sensor developments and from the global expansion of this observational network.