Project description
When the ocean’s carbon balance tips
Carbon dioxide drives climate change, but the Earth’s ability to absorb it through the oceans is limited and remains largely unknown. Scientists warn that as the planet warms, we could reach climate tipping points. These are abrupt shifts that compromise the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon, resulting in long-lasting impacts. The ERC-funded BGCTip project will examine the past for clues. By studying sudden climate swings during the last ice age, researchers will investigate how ocean life and currents have changed. They will use isotope analysis and climate models to determine whether today’s oceans face similar risks. This work is designed to inform projections of the future behaviour of the Earth’s carbon cycle.
Objective
CO2 emissions are the primary driver of anthropogenic climate change, and it is thus vital to enhance our understanding of the global carbon cycle, its changes, internal processes, and feedbacks with Earth’s climate system. Climate change further threatens to push the Earth system across multiple tipping points, which could have significant, but yet unconstrained impacts on the carbon cycle. BGCTip will address these challenges by investigating the potentially cascading interactions of climate and ocean tipping points with marine biogeochemical systems that drive CO2-uptake. By leveraging the extensive information of Earth’s past abrupt climatic events of the last glacial cycle, BGCTip aims to decipher the triggers and feedback mechanisms that govern the complex relationship between climate and the carbon cycle. This will be achieved through a novel combination of methods that link proxy reconstructions with biogeochemical isotope modeling. An intermediate complexity Earth system model will be used and further developed capable of transiently simulating these past climate transitions. New isotope proxies (δ15N, δ30Si, δ138Ba, and δ60Ni), that trace various aspects of marine biogeochemistry, will be implemented in the model. For the first time, these new biogeochemical proxies will be employed together with ocean circulation proxies in a coherent model framework constrained by global compilations of proxy reconstructions. This will provide a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of past climate tipping on the biological pump and oceanic carbon uptake. Exploiting these paleo-constraints, the impact of tipping points will then be systematically assessed across the full range of available future climate scenarios.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences physical geography glaciology
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software software applications simulation software
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences geochemistry biogeochemistry
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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3012 Bern
Switzerland
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