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NORTH ATLANTIC SLOWS DOWN THE GREENHOUSE-EFFECT

June 08, 1999

What sounds to us like bookkeeping of global change and tedious science, has a big meaning for our climate future. After all, traffic and industrial plants in Europe and North America play a particularly large role in the carbon dioxide pollution of the atmosphere and the greenhouse-effect resulting from it. The processes in the North Atlantic Ocean have as yet been able to keep the global increase in temperature within reasonable levels.

The North Atlantic is a very important sink for carbon dioxide (CO2) and has taken up about a quarter of the greenhouse-gas-emissions produced since the beginning of industrialization. Measurements taken during expeditions on the German research vessel "Meteor" established in addition, that the waters of the Greenland and Labrador Sea, which are loaded with anthropogenic CO2, have already penetrated to the seafloor, whilst in the East Atlantic anthropogenic CO2 has not been traced at depths below three thousand five hundred meters. The latter is due to the significantly weeker currents in the eastern part of the Atlantic Ocean.

During this decade, the role played by the North Atlantic in climate development has been researched in detail; above all, within the framework of two extensive marine research programs, which are now coming to an end - JGOFS (Joint Global Ocean Flux Study) and WOCE (World Ocean Circulation Experiment) - on dozens of expeditions, by hundreds of scientists, with tens of thousands of carbon dioxide profiles. "Now we want to canalize this flood of data" says Dr. Ludger Mintrop, one of the conference organizers from Bremen University. "Scientists working on climate prediction, who at present have to rely on older carbon dioxide data, should also be able to benefit from this information. In this way our data contribute to a better understanding of the role of the ocean in climate development."

Inquiries:
MARUM Public Relations
Albert Gerdes
email: agerdes@marum.de
Phone +49 - 421 - 218-7761
Fax +49 - 421 - 218-3116

Further Information (Conference program etc.):
www.ifm.uni-kiel.de/ch/workshop/index.htm

Research Center Ocean Margins (University of Bremen)