Can whales help mitigate human-induced climate change? What about mangroves, kelp forests, or the trillions of microscopic organisms drifting through the ocean and capturing carbon through photosynthesis?
The ocean absorbs about a quarter of the CO₂ we emit, so it seems natural to imagine that ocean life is doing the work much as forests do on land. But the real story is more complex.
The New England Aquarium’s Lowell Lecture Series and the Lorenz Center of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT present the John H. Carlson Lecture, featuring oceanographer Marina Lévy on an exploration of the ocean’s extraordinary carbon machine. From forests on land to underwater forests, from microscopic phytoplankton to the web of marine life and the global ocean circulation, we will follow carbon through the ocean to discover what actually makes it one of the planet’s great carbon sinks and why that matters as the ocean warms and its circulation changes. And if we understand how this remarkable machine works, could we help it absorb even more CO₂? We will explore some of the emerging ideas for using the ocean to remove carbon from the atmosphere, along with their promises, limitations, and unanswered questions.