Better Understanding of Phytoplankton in Ocean Carbon Cycle Informs Regional Climate Modelers

Accurate regional climate projections are vital for coastal planners, engineers, and communities which face an onslaught of impacts from climate change, including sea-level rise, changing precipitation patterns, and more intense weather extremes. Ocean processes, including carbon sequestration (long-term storage of atmospheric carbon to mitigate climate change), are a key piece of the puzzle. A Sea Grant-funded researcher harnessed a 28-year sediment data set to quantify the contribution of phytoplankton to deep ocean carbon export and to identify the types of phytoplankton that were exported. She worked with coastal ocean modelers to make this data useful for them and also learn how their modeling data could inform her results. The outreach conducted by the researcher resulted in interdisciplinary discussions and connections that may enable the results of this work to be integrated into future modeling studies. That could improve understanding of the carbon cycle in the California Current and lead to more accurate climate projections, which has broad usefulness for coastal planners and communities.