New Stanford-led research unveils a hidden factor that could change our understanding of how oceans mitigate climate change. The study, published Oct. 11 in Science, reveals never-before seen mucus "parachutes" produced by microscopic marine organisms that significantly slow their sinking, putting the brakes on a process crucial for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The surprising discovery implies that previous estimates of the ocean's carbon sequestration potential may have been overestimated, but also paves the way toward improving climate models and informing policymakers in their efforts to slow climate change.
"We haven't been looking the right way," said study senior author Manu Prakash, an associate professor of bioengineering and of oceans in the Stanford School of Engineering and Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. "What we found underscores the importance of fundamental scientific observation and the need to study natural processes in their true environments. It's critical to our ability to mitigate climate change."
The ocean sequesters 5-10 gigatons of carbon annually. If the plankton can sink low enough in the ocean, that carbon could be stored - away from the atmosphere - for tens of thousands of years.
The biological pump
Marine snow - a mixture of dead phytoplankton, bacteria, fecal pellets, and other organic particles - absorbs about a third of human-made carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and shuttles it down to the ocean floor where it is locked away for millennia. Scientists have known about this phenomenon - known as the biological pump - for some time. However, the exact manner in which these delicate particles fall (the ocean's average depth is 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles) has remained a mystery until now.
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Illustration of microscopic marine organisms, called marine snow, sinking through the ocean. Marine snow is a mixture of dead phytoplankton, bacteria, fecal pellets, and other organic particles and plays a crucial role in rerouting carbon from the atmosphere. | Prakash Lab
