Marine Environmental Modelling Group

Halifax Researchers Want to Alter the Ocean to Slow Climate Change

June 15, 2023 - The task is daunting. It is estimated that, in order to prevent the global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees, we will have to remove hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere this century.

Much focus over the years has been placed on the importance of trees and their ability to remove carbon. Preserving and planting more forests will help in our fight, but what about the ocean?

Many people don’t know that, for eons, the Earth’s largest body of water has been an important carbon sponge for the planet. According to the Carbon to Sea Initiative, 38 trillion tonnes of carbon is stored in the ocean. Now, academic researchers at Dalhousie University are partnering with Halifax’s booming ocean tech sector to allow the ocean to suck up even more carbon from the atmosphere.

See full article - Huddle, Halifax Researchers Want to Alter the Ocean to Slow Climate Change

Could the sea help save us?

June 14, 2023 - The United Nations calls the ocean “the lungs of the planet.” It absorbs 25 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions and sequesters up to four times more carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere than terrestrial forests. But what if it could take an even deeper breath? What if we could leverage its natural capacity to sequester CO₂ from the atmosphere?

The answer to this question has the potential to be game changing for humanity’s fight against climate change, and Dalhousie has taken the global lead in pursuing it with nearly $15 million in support from the Carbon to Sea Initiative. Lead principal investigator Dr. Katja Fennel, chair of Dalhousie’s Department of Oceanography, says the Ocean Alk-align research program, which includes researchers in North America, Europe, and Australia, will investigate how a human-induced increase in ocean alkalinity could enhance the ocean’s ability to absorb and hold carbon.

See full article - Dal News, Could the sea help save us?

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$50+ Million “Carbon to Sea Initiative” Will Accelerate Research into Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, a Promising Carbon Dioxide Removal Approach to Combat Climate Change

June 7, 2023 - The Carbon to Sea Initiative, a non-profit research and development effort, launched today to accelerate research into ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), which is a way to address climate change. OAE could be among the most effective and scalable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches.

Carbon to Sea has raised more than $50 million from philanthropic funders and to date has committed $23 million in grant funding to a network of dozens of researchers focused on OAE. Details about the grant-funded research and engineering projects are available at CarbontoSea.org.

See full article - Carbon to Sea Initiative, $50+ Million “Carbon to Sea Initiative” Will Accelerate Research into Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, a Promising Carbon Dioxide Removal Approach to Combat Climate Change

See Also - MIT Technology Review, Meta’s former CTO has a new $50 million project: ocean-based carbon removal

2023 - Low-oxygen “dead zone” in the northern Gulf of Mexico predicted to grow to 12,600 km² this summer

June 5, 2023 - Dalhousie University scientists forecast that the size of the hypoxic zone (also known as “dead zone”) in the northern Gulf of Mexico will reach 9,200 km² by the end of July, when an annually recurring monitoring cruise typically maps location and extent of the hypoxic zone, and will grow to a maximum extent of 12,600 km² by the end of August. This maximum is more than twice size of Prince Edward Island and smaller by 10% than the 36-year average Gulf hypoxic zone of 13,900 km². The Dalhousie forecast is part of the annual ensemble dead-zone forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The NOAA and USGS forecast, which is the average of an ensemble of six statistical models including the Dalhousie model, is similar to the Dalhousie forecast.

The hypoxic zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico forms every summer and is the largest in North American coastal waters. Freshwater and plant nutrients—mostly from unused agricultural fertilizer, and urban and industrial wastewater—travel to the Gulf via the Mississippi River. These nutrients stimulate a sequence of biological transformations in coastal waters that significantly decrease oxygen levels near the bottom resulting in an environment unable to support most higher marine life forms.

All forecasts of the hypoxic zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico are based on an estimate of spring nutrient discharge from the Mississippi, determined by the USGS in the first week of June. The forecast model developed by Dalhousie scientists Arnaud Laurent and Katja Fennel is unique in its ability to provide a temporally and spatially explicit forecast, in other words, the hypoxic zone’s location, size, and evolution is predicted throughout the summer season. This is the 6th year that a forecast with this level of detail has been produced (see 2018 forecast here, 2019 forecast here, 2020 forecast here, 2021 forecast here, and the 2022 forecast here).

Many other coastal regions around the globe are experiencing declines in oxygen, leaving marine animals increasingly gasping for breath. In the Canadian Maritimes, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Scotian Shelf are suffering from low-oxygen in near-bottom waters, squeezing the habitat of several commercially important and endangered fish species. This trend has been ongoing for several decades, as man-made inputs of nutrients and global warming conspire to depress oxygen levels in coastal ocean waters.

Referenced in - The New York Times, Tens of Thousands of Dead Fish Wash Ashore on Gulf Coast in Texas (subscription required)