Engel, Anja (2006) The sensitivity of the Biologigal Pump to changing CO2 in the Ocean: What can we learn from present day experiments?. [Invited talk] In: 3rd Japanese-German Frontiers of Science Symposium, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. , 02.-05.11.2006, Heidelberg, Germany .

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Abstract

There is now global awareness that human activities are responsible for increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to a level higher than it’s ever been in the last 20 million years. This awareness raises the need for a better understanding of the complex feedback mechanisms between global climate and biogeochemical processes. Although tiny in size, marine phytoplankton play a large role in the global carbon cycle, because each year they remove about 45 Gt of inorganic carbon from the upper ocean during growth and redirect a significant fraction to the ocean’s interior. This biological sequestration of carbon promotes net uptake of the greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere and is referred to as the ‘biological pump’. Because CO2 and carbonate ions are substrates in metabolic processes, such as photosynthesis and calcification, changes in their availability affect the physiology of cells and the stoichiometry of metabolic products. The degree to which phytoplankton species can tolerate changes of the carbonate system, and the extent to which the biological response may affect the efficiency of the biological pump is still unknown. Therewith future atmospheric CO2 concentration is difficult to predict. One approach for examining the response of marine phytoplankton to changing CO2 concentrations is the use of perturbation experiments with contemporary species. This lecture will present recent studies on CO2 effects on biological processes from the organism to ecosystem level and will discuss the prospects and limits of present day experiments for understanding the variability of the biological pump of the past, present, and future.

Document Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Invited talk)
Keywords:	Marine Biology; biological oceanography
Date Deposited:	06 Oct 2011 11:26
Last Modified:	07 May 2020 11:10
URI:	https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/12275

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