DAM’s first research mission examines oceans as carbon reservoirs

It is a well-known prob­lem: more and more car­bon is enter­ing the atmos­phere due to human activ­i­ties. The atmos­phere is heat­ing up. The cli­mate is chang­ing and with it the liv­ing con­di­tions on our plan­et. The ocean is slow­ing down this process. But its heat and car­bon diox­ide uptake is too slow to achieve the goals of the Paris cli­mate agree­ment — even with ambi­tious cli­mate pro­tec­tion poli­cies and dras­tic emis­sion reduc­tions. In the first research mis­sion of the Ger­man Alliance for Marine Research (DAM), launched at the begin­ning of August, around 200 researchers in six col­lab­o­ra­tive projects are inves­ti­gat­ing how the cli­mate-reg­u­lat­ing brak­ing effect of the ocean can be strength­ened in the future.

The ele­ment car­bon, with its almost incal­cu­la­ble amount of com­pounds, is the basis for life on earth. Its dis­tri­b­u­tion also deter­mines the cli­mate on our plan­et. If a lot of car­bon is bound in the Earth­’s inte­ri­or or in the ocean and only a lit­tle is in the atmos­phere as gaseous car­bon diox­ide (CO2), it tends to be cool on Earth. The more that enters the atmos­phere, the warmer it gets. In the past 250 years, mankind has released gigan­tic amounts of CO2 into the atmos­phere. The con­se­quences can be felt and mea­sured as glob­al warming.

Oceans as carbon reservoirs

In the search for ways to mit­i­gate the increas­ing­ly dras­tic con­se­quences of this man-made cli­mate change, the ocean is now increas­ing­ly com­ing into focus. The first research mis­sion of DAM, found­ed in 2019 by the Ger­man fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the north­ern Ger­man states and marine research insti­tu­tions, is ded­i­cat­ed to pre­cise­ly this social­ly so rel­e­vant top­ic. Coor­di­nat­ed at GEOMAR Helmholtz Cen­tre for Ocean Research Kiel and the Leib­niz Insti­tute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), around 200 scientists:inside will inves­ti­gate “Marine Car­bon Stor­age in Decar­boniza­tion Path­ways” over the next three years. The Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research is fund­ing the research mis­sion with 27 mil­lion euros over an ini­tial phase of three years.

“The ocean con­tains more than 50 times as much car­bon as the atmos­phere. So far, it has absorbed about a quar­ter of anthro­pogenic CO2 emis­sions, mit­i­gat­ing the effects of cli­mate change.”

- Andreas Oschlies of GEOMAR, one of the mis­sion’s spokespersons

How­ev­er, “We expect the pro­por­tion of ocean­ic CO2 stor­age to decrease as warm­ing, acid­i­fi­ca­tion, decreas­es in oxy­gen lev­els and oth­er human-induced per­tur­ba­tions impair the ocean’s phys­i­cal, chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal abil­i­ty to absorb car­bon diox­ide,” adds Gre­gor Rehder of IOW, the sec­ond spokesper­son for the research mission.

Contributions to achieving the Paris climate goals

Both sci­en­tists empha­size that the most impor­tant and urgent action against fur­ther cli­mate warm­ing is a com­pre­hen­sive reduc­tion of green­house gas emis­sions. “There is no way around this,” says Andreas Oschlies. “How­ev­er, all sce­nar­ios in the lat­est Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change report imply that, in addi­tion to reduc­ing emis­sions, we need to active­ly remove car­bon diox­ide from the atmos­phere in order to achieve the 1.5‑degree tar­get,” adds Gre­gor Rehder.

Cur­rent­ly, cor­re­spond­ing pro­pos­als focus pri­mar­i­ly on land-based meth­ods. How­ev­er, due to the high com­pe­ti­tion for land use with food and ener­gy pro­duc­tion, land-based meth­ods will hard­ly be suf­fi­cient to achieve the agreed Paris cli­mate tar­gets. That is why ocean-based options are being increas­ing­ly explored. Knowl­edge about how the ocean could be used for decar­boniza­tion has been lim­it­ed. In the DAM research mis­sion now start­ing, sci­en­tists from 21 research insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and com­pa­nies are inves­ti­gat­ing how and to what extent the ocean can play a sus­tain­able role in remov­ing and stor­ing CO2 from the atmos­phere and thus help keep cli­mate change with­in the lim­its set by the Paris Agreement.

Knowledge for decision-making

“This first research mis­sion of DAM, with its rela­tion to cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion, has a decid­ed­ly high rel­e­vance for soci­ety and pol­i­cy mak­ers, who will decide on effec­tive cli­mate pol­i­cy mea­sures,” explains Michael Bruno Klein, CEO of DAM. “It is pre­cise­ly for this kind of sci­ence-based pro­vi­sion for the future that DAM was found­ed. We have made it our cen­tral task to strength­en the solu­tion-ori­ent­ed research of our mem­ber insti­tu­tions and to devel­op action knowl­edge for deci­sion-mak­ing in exchange with stake­hold­ers. The goal is to make research find­ings effective.”

“As part of the research mis­sion, we will pro­vide con­crete options for action, imple­ment knowl­edge trans­fer mea­sures, involve stake­hold­ers and com­mu­ni­cate trans­par­ent­ly,” empha­sizes Andreas Oschlies. The research mis­sion will thus pro­vide impor­tant deci­sion-mak­ing aids for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Ger­man cli­mate strategy.

Six consortia form the research mission

In six con­sor­tia, dif­fer­ent meth­ods of marine car­bon diox­ide removal and stor­age will be inves­ti­gat­ed in terms of their poten­tial, risks and pos­si­ble side effects, and impacts on the marine envi­ron­ment, the Earth sys­tem and soci­ety will be deter­mined and com­bined in a trans­dis­ci­pli­nary assess­ment framework.

ASMASYS will bring togeth­er knowl­edge on marine options for active atmos­pher­ic CO2 reduc­tion and devel­op a uni­fied assess­ment frame­work for the dif­fer­ent approach­es. In addi­tion to sci­en­tif­ic fun­da­men­tals and ques­tions of tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­i­ty, legal, social and eth­i­cal aspects as well as polit­i­cal frame­work con­di­tions will be tak­en into account (coor­di­na­tion: Prof. Dr. Gre­gor Rehder, IOW).

RETAKE inves­ti­gates whether and in what form marine alka­lin­i­ty enhance­ment can be a fea­si­ble method to per­ma­nent­ly remove sig­nif­i­cant amounts of CO2 from the atmos­phere in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound and social­ly respon­si­ble way (coor­di­na­tion: Prof. Dr. Andreas Oschlies, GEOMAR).

sea4soCiety focus­es on car­bon stor­age in veg­e­ta­tion-rich coastal ecosys­tems. Tak­ing into account fur­ther soci­etal uses, as well as poten­tial risks, inno­v­a­tive approach­es are being devel­oped to enhance this nat­ur­al poten­tial for car­bon stor­age (coor­di­na­tion: Prof. Dr. Mar­tin Zim­mer, Leib­niz Cen­ter for Trop­i­cal Marine Research — ZMT).

GEOSTOR explores the poten­tial of sub­sur­face stor­age of CO2 in sand­stone for­ma­tions under the North Sea. The aim is to quan­ti­fy the stor­age capac­i­ties in the Ger­man North Sea and to ana­lyze the asso­ci­at­ed risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties (coor­di­na­tion: Prof. Dr. Klaus Wall­mann, GEOMAR).

Tes­tArt­Up inves­ti­gates whether and in what way upwelling of nutri­ent-rich deep water can pro­mote near-sur­face plank­ton growth and thus sequester more car­bon from the atmos­phere (coor­di­na­tion: Prof. Dr. Ulf Riebe­sell, GEOMAR).

AIMS³ inves­ti­gates to what extent CO2 can be per­ma­nent­ly stored as car­bon­ate in the basaltic upper ocean crust. Planned lab­o­ra­to­ry exper­i­ments will flank stud­ies of the nat­ur­al sys­tems at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Inno­v­a­tive mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems will mon­i­tor the envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences (coor­di­na­tion: Prof. Dr. Achim Kopf, MARUM — Cen­ter for Marine Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bremen).

“Both the EU Com­mis­sion and the Ger­man Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment have set ‘green­house gas neu­tral­i­ty by 2050’ as a tar­get. If we want to achieve this, we need to take ambi­tious and effec­tive action now,” stress­es Gre­gor Rehder, spokesman for the research mis­sion. “The ocean can also help us achieve this.” His col­league Andreas Oschlies adds, “All projects will make an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the UN Decade of Ocean Research for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment. The goal of the Decade is inter­na­tion­al solu­tions for the pro­tec­tion and sus­tain­able use of the ocean.”