BRICS: Biology's Role In ocean Carbon Storage - a gap analysis

金砖国家：生物学在海洋碳储存中的作用——差距分析

• 批准号: NE/X007162/1
• 负责人: Alessandro Tagliabue
• 金额: $ 1.95万
• 依托单位: University of Liverpool
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX007162%2F1
• 关键词: BRICS; Biology; Role; ocean; Carbon

The ocean is a large carbon reservoir which contains fifty times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Biological processes contribute to carbon storage in the ocean on climate-relevant timescales (hundreds to thousands of years). Marine phytoplankton, which are drifting microscopic plants, use sunlight and carbon dioxide in the upper ocean to form their biomass, also called organic matter. When phytoplankton die they sink into the ocean interior, moving organic carbon deeper in the water column; the deeper it goes the longer it will remain out of contact with the atmosphere. This process, often called the biological carbon pump, helps to regulate our climate and without biology in the ocean it has been shown that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could be nearly double what they are today. In this project we will examine three ways in which biological processes influence global ocean carbon storage, and where knowledge gaps are hindering progress on predicting ocean carbon storage in the future. First, is understanding how the buffering capacity of seawater changes, driven by phytoplankton that produce chalk shells, which ultimately affects CO2 uptake. Second, is understanding the efficiency and variability of the primary production of organic matter by phytoplankton. Third, is understanding how much of this organic matter reaches the interior ocean, which tells us how much carbon has been respired during the transit from the upper ocean. Earth system models have differing simplistic representations of the biological carbon pump due to the computational costs of running global models far into the future. The suite of models that contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports do not agree on the magnitude or direction of change for ocean carbon storage under future climate scenarios. This means we have low confidence for our future projections, which is further impeded by a growing discrepancy between models and observations. This project will identify the gaps in our understanding and highlight model limitations for each of the three areas outlined above. We will achieve this by reviewing the current literature to identify key processes. We will assess the differences in how current climate models represent changes in the buffering capacity, primary production of organic matter and the amount of interior respiration, and how these differences may affect future ocean carbon storage projections. This will aid in identifying the observations that are needed to improve our grasp of the processes controlling the biological carbon pump, which will in turn allow for improved model representations and predictions. We aim to identify the priority processes that are significant contributors to biological carbon storage, have the potential to be widely measured to allow robust model representations, can be feasibly included into models, and are relevant over long timescales and globally. We will carry out an expert assessment by asking the international scientific community to rank which processes are the most significant for ocean carbon storage and climate feedbacks. Our analysis and the survey results will inform recommendations for future field programmes based on the tractability of observing key processes, and the likelihood of being able to include them in models.

海洋是一个大碳储层，其中包含大气中碳量的五十倍。生物过程有助于在与气候相关的时间范围内（数百年）在海洋中储存碳。海洋浮游植物正在漂流微观植物，在上海上使用阳光和二氧化碳形成其生物质，也称为有机物。当浮游植物死亡时，它们会沉入海洋内部，在水柱中更深地移动有机碳。越深，它将与大气接触的时间越长。这个过程通常称为生物碳泵，有助于调节我们的气候，并且在海洋中没有生物学，结果表明，大气中的二氧化碳水平几乎是今天的两倍。在这个项目中，我们将研究三种方式，即生物过程影响全球海洋碳的存储，以及知识差距在未来预测海洋碳存储方面正在阻碍进步。首先，了解海水的缓冲能力如何发生由浮游植物产生粉笔壳的驱动，最终影响二氧化碳的吸收。其次，是了解浮游植物的主要产生有机物生产的效率和可变性。第三，了解这种有机物有多少到达室内海洋，这告诉我们从上海中的过境中呼吸了多少碳。由于运行全球模型的计算成本遥远的未来，地球系统模型的生物碳泵具有不同的简单表示。在未来的气候场景下，有助于政府间气候变化（IPCC）报告的模型套件不同意海洋碳存储的变化。这意味着我们对未来的预测信心较低，这进一步阻碍了模型和观察之间的差异。该项目将确定我们理解的差距，并突出上述三个领域中的每个领域中的每个领域的限制。我们将通过审查当前文献来识别关键过程来实现这一目标。我们将评估当前气候模型如何代表缓冲能力的变化，有机物的主要产生以及内部呼吸量的变化以及这些差异如何影响未来的海洋碳存储预测的差异。这将有助于确定提高我们对控制生物碳泵的过程所需的观察结果，这反过来又可以改善模型表示和预测。我们旨在确定对生物碳储存的重要贡献者的优先级过程，具有广泛测量以允许稳健模型表示的潜力，可以将其包括在模型中，并且在较长的时间表和全球范围内具有相关性。我们将通过要求国际科学界对哪些过程排名最重要的海洋碳储存和气候反馈最重要的评估来进行专家评估。我们的分析和调查结果将根据观察关键过程的障碍以及能够将它们包括在模型中的可能性，为将来的现场计划提供建议。