Ocean-ICU Improving Carbon Understanding

Project Information

OceanICU

Grant agreement ID: 101083922

DOI

10.3030/101083922

EC signature date 24 October 2022

Start date 1 November 2022

End date 31 October 2027

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

€ 13 094 052,25

EU contribution

€ 13 094 052,25

Coordinated by

NORCE RESEARCH AS
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - OceanICU (Ocean-ICU Improving Carbon Understanding)

Reporting period: 2024-05-01 to 2025-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Climate change is a massive issue which the European Commission will address via the ‘Green Deal’ – an ambitions plan to reach climate neutrality by 2050. This involves all society with ocean users being key given the strong control the ocean exerts over atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by taking up ca. 30% of CO2 emissions. In parallel, ocean biological processes, mainly the sinking and interior decomposition of surface produced organic matter, separately store enough CO2 to keep atmospheric CO2 much lower than in an abiotic ocean. Conventionally we believe that the biological term has been unchanged by human activities. However, the current and future scale of human activities such as fishing, mining, trawling, dredging and drilling are potentially so large that this assumption is questionable. Based on this context OceanICU aims to:
1. Define the baseline of ocean C uptake occurring now against which change can be judged. Currently the Global Carbon Budget (GCB) shows a large offset between ocean C uptake estimated from data and numerical models. Our focus is on comparing surface uptake and interior accumulation to add a further estimate to our understanding.
2. Evaluating the strength and operation of key biological processes that are susceptible to climate change and disruption by human activities. These will then be incorporated into a range of numerical models. Climate sensitive processes are those impacted by acidification, deoxygenation and warming. Our focus around human impacts is on the role of fish and multicellular organisms in the carbon cycle because these are susceptible to human intervention via biomass removal (fishing) and sediment injection into the water column (mining).
3. Use this new information to generate tools that will allow policy makers, industrialists and wider society to assess the effects of resource extraction on the ocean C cycle. A particular focus is creating 'Decision Support Tools’ or DSTs as key practical resources that will allow regulators and industrial partners to evaluate the impact of their actions on the ocean C cycle.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We have updated the Global Ocean Data Analysis Product (GLODAP), which brings together all existing interior carbon data that exists into a fully quality controlled database. This allows the calculation of carbon accumulation in the ocean interior over time to compare to surface fluxes integrated over time. These new estimates of the global ocean carbon sink address the model – data mismatch in the Global Carbon budget. The various databased ways of estimating uptake are broadly consistent with each other and hence that there is more work to do around how numerical models represent the ocean C cycle.
We have also conducted a large amount of fieldwork at sea, including a dedicated OceanICU research expedition. We have shown the role of the plankton (small plants and animals that drift with the currents) and particle sinking in carbon cycling and synthesised these data into models to understand the impact of climate multi-stressors on carbon storage.
We have generated a database of mean particle size in the upper 100m of the ocean, quantified zooplankton and higher trophic levels' role in particle flux and measured microbial carbon fixation and respiration in the North Atlantic.
We have determined the effect of mining and trawling on the C cycle, developed modeling scenarios, and adapted and extended benthic and pelagic biogeochemical models. This has involved a large data science activity to allow multiple models operating on different scales to ‘talk to each other’. This process is now complete and we are running experiments to determine which processes are the most significant.
We have taken all this information and used it to generate a DST that uses ‘Ocean System Pathways, OSPs’ - future scenarios of how resource extraction will evolve linked to different human scenarios. Initially this operated over small areas, now we are using it to simulate much larger areas and enhancing the ability of interested groups from industry government and civil society to use it.
We have organised our interactions with the outside world into a series of areas where we will achieve impact by transmitting outputs and impacts to wider society and policy makers. We have mapped how our work will contribute to large scale assessments such as the GCB and writing key sections in the Integrated Ocean Carbon Research report and the World Ocean Assessment.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We have shown that several independent observational estimates of the ocean CO2 sink agree and begun to inform the GCB and assist in the reconciliation of the model- data gap and the resultant uplifting of the Ocean C Sink.
We have also understood and quantified multiple biological carbon pathways. These include the role of whales and fish, and the effect of human exploitation of some of these groups. We have determined the roleof ocean acidification in driving the system including on organic matter sinking, the major pathway by which carbon enters the ocean biologically. We have produced the first global, monthly climatology of particle size from Biogeochemical Argo floats, allowing explicit size effects on carbon fluxes in biogeochemical models.
New regional information on aggregate properties provides first insights into how composition and temperature influence turnover and settling of organic aggregates. We have added a substantial focus on higher trophic levels including the results of fishing and extraction. Key actions include assessments of human pressures on these pathways, a new stoichiometric algorithm to convert nitrogen model outputs into carbon, first estimates of carbon fluxes from cephalopods, and models of fishing impacts on carbon flux to the seabed.
We have worked extensively on the development of models, emulators and governance analyses. This has involved building a suite of interoperable models and metrics for robust assessment and comparison and testing novel parameterizations. Some of these now sit in the European Digital twin of the ocean and we can now consider external disruptions to the carbon cycle from human activities.
We have determined the value of how ocean biology regulates the C cycle ocean. This has involved determining how long carbon stays in the ocean and quantifying climate- and fisheries-driven changes in sequestration. In addition, we have begun to work on OSPs to capture the likely future trajectory of activity.

Partner institutions in the OceanICU project

WP structure in the OceanICU project