New CO2 findings may unlock secrets of global warming (+video) - The Capitol Column

This article was updated at 8:46 p.m. EDT with a video released by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

A newly released study finds that giant whirlpools and currents 500 miles wide may allow scientists to unlock the secrets of how oceans absorb greenhouse gases and curb the effects of global warming.

The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team of British and Australian scientists, finds that an important method of how carbon is drawn down from the surface of the Southern Ocean to the deep waters beneath may absorb enough carbon dioxide to halt the effects of global warming.

About a quarter of the carbon dioxide on Earth is stored away in its oceans â€" some 40 percent of that in the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica, say scientists.  The amount is considered the single largest deposit of carbon dioxide on the planet, say climate scientists. At a depth of nearly 3,200 feet, carbon can be locked away for hundreds to thousands of years, yet scientists had never been sure exactly how it gets there after dissolving into surface waters.

The team made the discovery after digesting nearly ten years worth of data. In 2002, 80 floats were deployed in the Southern Ocean to collect information on the temperature and salinity, allowing scientists to collect the largest sample to date.

The team says the data has allowed scientists to better project the possible consequences of global warming. Researchers say the information could allow policy makers to better craft solutions to the issue, which remains one of the most pressing issues confronting the international community.

“By identifying the mechanisms responsible for taking carbon out of the surface layer in the ocean, we’re in a much better situation to talk about how climate change might impact that process,” said oceanographer Richard Matear, one of the authors of the study.

The team noted that the Southern Ocean could allow scientists to better predict how ocean currents and ocean systems around the world deal with the increasingly large amount of carbon dioxide. Until now, climate scientists understood little about the relationship between oceanic systems and carbon dioxide. Due to the size and remote location of the Southern Ocean, scientists have only recently been able to explore the workings of the ocean with the help of the small robotic probes.

“The Southern Ocean is a large window by which the atmosphere connects to the interior of the ocean below. Until now we didn’t know exactly the physical processes of how carbon ends up being stored deep in the ocean. It’s the combination of winds, currents and eddies that create these carbon-capturing pathways drawing waters down into the deep ocean from the ocean surface,” said lead author Jean-Baptiste Sallée from British Antarctic Survey. “Now that we have an improved understanding of the mechanisms for carbon draw-down we are better placed to understand the effects of changing climate and future carbon absorption by the ocean.”

It remains unclear whether the results of the study will do anything to progress the debate over global warming. The results of the study come on the same day another climate scientist opined that humans are the cause of an increase in temperatures across the world.

“I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause,” Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, noted in an op-ed for The New York Times.”