Ocean Chemistry of the Greenhouse Gases II
Project Manager: Ed Peltzer
Lead Scientist: Peter Brewer
This is a continuation of a well-established project that continues to evolve. In 2005 we will complete work already begun and carry out an important new series of experiments with MBARI ships and vehicles in local waters. We propose to create at MBARI the essential tools for simulating and testing the impacts of an inevitably high CO2/lower pH ocean.
The 2004 discovery by NOAA scientists of a long-predicted plume of liquid CO2 arising from a sub-sea volcano has stimulated further interest in our work, and we will design new experiments and models for probing the impact of this phenomenon through acoustic sensing. We have measured the properties of both natural and synthetic hydrates on the ocean floor using advanced spectroscopic techniques. The insights gained lead us to question the way in which gases and/or hydrates are presumed to de-stabilize the sea floor. We propose new theories and experiments designed to illuminate the essential physical chemistry that may underlie this process.