New research sheds lights on the huge carbon store in Canada’s seabed
Retrieved on:
Donnerstag, Juni 13, 2024
Oceans have absorbed more than 90 per cent of the excess heat from global warming and at least 25 per cent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
Key Points:
- Oceans have absorbed more than 90 per cent of the excess heat from global warming and at least 25 per cent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
- They also store vast amounts of carbon, locking it away from the atmosphere for hundreds to even thousands of years.
- A major contributing factor has been the lack of reliable, high-resolution maps of the seabed’s carbon store.
Nature as a buffer
- But, due to the scale of the problem, every tool will be necessary.
- Natural ecosystems act as a major buffer against climate change.
- Of all the carbon dioxide pumped into our atmosphere, around 60 per cent is absorbed by our lands and oceans.
Mapping seabed carbon
- In our new study, we compiled the best available data on the composition of seabed sediments across Canada and combined this with a wide range of environmental data within a machine learning predictive mapping process to create the first national map of organic carbon stocks in seabed sediments.
- In total, the amount of carbon estimated to exist within the top 30 centimetres of seabed sediments across Canada is 10.9 billion tonnes.
Canada’s carbon-rich seafloor
- On Canada’s east coast, enclosed inlets and bays also contained the highest amount of carbon.
- However, a significant amount was also predicted to occur in the deep channels of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
- In comparison, the Arctic seafloor generally contained lower levels of carbon, but relatively high carbon was predicted in sediments close to the Arctic coasts and in the northern parts of Baffin Bay near Greenland.