As the planet continues to warm and the effects of human-caused climate change continue to intensify, the need to find ways to mitigate climate change increases. INSIDE Nature Communication University of California, Irvine scientists describe a new technique that allows them to see how complex organic molecules produced by marine bacteria can store climate-warming carbon deep in the ocean.
“This is the first time we’ve measured something like this in seawater,” said Brett Walker, associate professor in the Department of Earth System Sciences and senior author of the study. “Our new technique is great because you can look at the composition of all the organic molecules in seawater and watch them spin.”
Walker and his team conducted field research in Baffin Bay, between Canada and Greenland. The team measured the concentration of a class of molecules called carboxyl-rich alicyclic molecules (or CRAMs) in seawater and found that certain types of organic molecules are preferentially retained in the deep ocean, while others quickly rise to the surface.
“We found that in the deep ocean, about a quarter to a half of the CRAM is lost, and the only way to remove it is to do it biologically with heterotrophic bacteria that eat this material as an energy source,” Walker said. .
“We thought CRAM accumulated deep in the ocean. But when you look at the concentration data we produced for Baffin Bay, a very different picture emerges, and we found that, at least in Baffin Bay in this polar region, tons of CRAM are actually produced in the sunny environment. Ocean surface which is then removed from depth”.
Conversely, if half of the CRAM does not react and is stored deep in the ocean, this could mean that bacteria could store planet-warming carbon derived from CO2 at the surface. 2 for a very long time.
“This changes the way we thought about CRAM cycles before,” Walker said. “If more CRAM could be stored in the deep ocean, it would have the potential to moderate atmospheric climate, possibly on hundred-year time scales.”
The next step is to find a way to make the bacteria store as much CRAM as possible deep in the ocean.
“The goal would be to investigate whether there is a natural process where you can enhance the deep natural production of these inert compounds by local bacterial populations or something like that,” Walker said. “If you slightly increase the storage rate in the deep ocean, you can significantly change carbon storage over thousands of years.”
Walker and his colleagues plan to find out whether the same biochemical process occurs in ocean waters around the world. “We plan to estimate the rate of CRAM production or loss by deep-water formation and ocean circulation,” he said.
Source: Port Altele
