MARIRON · Modelling the marine iron cycle: Past and future biogeochemical-climate feedbacks
6РП — Действия „Мария Кюри“
- Период
- 2005-06-01 → 2007-05-31
- Финансиране от ЕС
- 174 965 €
- Участници
- 1
- Схема
- IIF
Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.
Накратко на български
Цикълът на желязото в океаните се анализира чрез моделиране на праховите частици, които стимулират растежа на фитопланктона. Това помага да се разбере как способността на океана да абсорбира въглероден диоксид влияе върху климата в миналото и бъдещето.
Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.
Резултати накратко
Final Activity Report Summary - MARIRON (Modelling the marine iron cycle: Past and future biogeochemical-climate feedbacks)
Iron is known to be a limiting nutrient for phytoplankton growth over large areas of the oceans, thus moderating the oceanic biological pump's ability to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) in the deep ocean. The major source of iron to the open ocean is via the aeolian pathway. Thus, a change in the flux of aeolian iron to the ocean should affect the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2. Ice core reconstructions between dust flux and carbon dioxide show an inverse relationship. During times of high dust flux, CO2 concentrations are low and vice-versa. This led to the implication of changes in aeolian iron as a driver in CO2 changes during Earth's history and as a possible mitigator of anthropogenic-induced rising CO2. In order to test the effect that changes in aeolian iron could have on CO2 concentrations in the past and the future, we added a parameterisation of oceanic iron cycling to the Bern three-dimensional global ocean biogeochemical and circulation model. Dust records from Dome-C, Antarctica were used to scale dust deposition in the model over four Antarctic warm events of the last glacial period. Our results suggested that changes in dust flux to the Southern Ocean played a limited role in modulating CO2 variations. The impact of iron fluxes on CO2 was dependent on parameter values chosen for the iron-binding ligand. In order to test the efficacy of iron fertilisation as a carbon mitigation solution, we increased aeolian iron fluxes by 100 times in various regions of the ocean for 1 000 years. Atmospheric CO2 was most sensitive to iron additions in the Southern Ocean, resulting in a CO2 reduction of 10 ppmv. This reduction though was a drop in the bucket compared to the 110 ppmv increase in CO2 from 1850 to today.
Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз
Цел на проекта
The goal of this proposal is to attract a female researcher coming to Europe for training and reinforce the scientific excellence of the European Union and Associated States. This will foster a mutually beneficial collaboration between two centres of excellence in climate modelling research, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA and the University of Bern, Switzerland. Knowledge will also be transferred to the University of Bern on the modelling of marine iron, an important micronutrient for marine ecosystems.The scientific objective of this proposal is to study the role of dust-derived iron in increasing the biological productivity of the marine ecosystem as a potential mechanism to drawdown carbon dioxide. This relates to the effect of global change on ecosystems, one of the 7 priority thematic areas of the European Research Area outlined in the Sixth Framework Programme. We will use an interdisciplinary approach that cuts across the disciplines of fluid dynamics, oceanography and biogeochemistry. Specifically, an iron cycling model developed at MIT will be coupled to a three dimensional ocean circulation-biogeochemistry model developed at the University of Bern and forced by dust flux records derived from ice cores to quantify the importance of aeolian iron supply on past and future atmospheric carbon dioxide, ecosystem structure and climate.Access to emerging data from the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), the first ice core record going back 900,000 years will allow us to validate model results and test new hypotheses. Since iron fertilisation has been proposed as a mitigation strategy to sequester anthropogenic carbon dioxide into the ocean from the atmosphere, we will perform numerical simulations to test its effectiveness.
Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).
Участници
- UNIVERSITAET BERN · BERNКоординаторШвейцария
Връзки
Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз