Predicting Biological Carbon in the Ocean Globally (PRECOG)

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from our society are rapidly warming our climate to currently 1.1 degrees C warmer than in preindustrial times. Global governments have pledged to reduce emissions to stabilise our warming climate at 1.5 degrees requiring us to reduce emissions of CO2 to a point where they no longer accumulate in the atmosphere: Net Zero. A crucial consideration in this effort are natural reservoirs of carbon on the Earth's surface such as permafrost and soils that store large amounts of carbon away from the atmosphere, but which are vulnerable to environmental change. The destabilisation of these reservoirs over time, releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere, presents a challenge to stabilising climate upon reaching Net Zero.

Therefore, predicting how these natural carbon reservoirs will change in the future is a crucially important task.

The Biological Carbon Pump is one of these natural reservoirs of carbon in our Earth System. It stores carbon in the ocean by plankton (microscopic plants) taking up CO2 as they grow in the surface ocean. The sinking remains of these plankton carry the carbon into the deep ocean locking it away for hundreds to thousands of years. This carbon pool is equivalent in size to the anthropogenically-driven increase in atmospheric CO2 over the 20th century.

The Biological Carbon Pump is widely expected to be sensitive to environmental change and could therefore release CO2 in the future. However, we have limited knowledge of what those changes might be and why because we don't have the necessary outputs from the state-of-the-art future projections by Earth System Models that underpin the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that inform social, economic and political decisions about Climate Change.

PREdicting biological Carbon in the Ocean Globally (PRECOG) will build a team of experts at the University of Liverpool to comprehensively explore the future of the Biological Carbon Pump using state-of-the-art Earth System Model projections. PRECOG will strategically align with an international network of researchers and industry partners to build a new knowledge framework that will inform future IPCC reports and mitigation strategies.

PRECOG will:

1) Derive new standard quantitative measures of the Biological Carbon Pump in a future changing ocean.

2) Quantify how and why the Biological Carbon Pump changes in state-of-the-art future projections that underpin the IPCC reports.

3) Determine the long-term impact of the Biological Carbon Pump beyond the year 2100 using new Earth System Model simulations.

4) Predict which future projections of the Biological Carbon Pump are most likely and how this might impact schemes to artificially enhance carbon storage by combining future projections with new compilations of observations.

PRECOG has a strong focus on connecting scientific outcomes to societally relevant outcomes. The research team will maintain a strong and active link with IPCC activities through its international network with the aim of raising the profile of Biological Carbon Pump research. PRECOG will also work with industry partners interested in techniques that will enhance the carbon storage of the Biological Carbon Pump to help mitigate rising CO2 such as kelp farming and seeding the ocean with iron. PRECOG will provide the state-of-the-art estimates for the best locations to undertake these activities and disseminate these findings through its industrial partners.

In summary, the Biological Carbon Pump is a vulnerable natural carbon pool in the ocean that can influence atmospheric CO2 in response to environmental change. The future of this carbon pool is however poorly known. This Future Leaders Fellowship, PRECOG, will establish a team of experts to explore the Biological Carbon Pump in state-of-the-art IPCC projections to find out what the likely future changes are and translate this is into a societally relevant agenda.

UKRI Funder: UKRI
Status: Active