VENTILATE: Ventilation and remineralisation in polar and sub-polar regions as indicators for climate change
VENTILATE will evaluate decadal changes in ventilation of the Nordic Seas (Greenland, Iceland, and Norwegian Seas) and the Arctic Ocean.
Objectives
VENTILATE aims to improve our understanding of how fluxes of carbon are affected by the ventilation state. This goes both for the physically driven process of uptake and surface-to-deep water transport of man-made CO2, and of biologically driven uptake and vertical transport of carbon.
Project Summary
The oceans uptake of atmospheric CO2 is connected both to physical and biological processes. This uptake has been very important for the Earths climate, modulating the effect of man-made CO2 since the industrial revolution.
However, with the continuing increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and the observed climate change, it is uncertain how the ocean’s uptake will be affected in the future.
A key knowledge here is the link between the physical processes and the oceanic carbon cycle. To increase our understanding of this link is the overall aim of VENTILATE.
