Rising global temperatures are leading to a decrease in the amount of organic carbon being deposited in the ocean floor. An international group of researchers meticulously collected data from over 50 years of oceanic scientific drilling expeditions to carry out a groundbreaking study of organic car
, and the University of Bremen analyzed data from drilled cores of muddy seafloor sediments that were gathered during 81 of the more than 1,500 shipboard expeditions mounted by the International Ocean Discovery Program and its predecessors.
“What we’re finding is that burial of organic carbon is very active,” said study co-author Mark Torres of Rice. “It changes a lot, and it responds to the Earth’s climatic system much more than scientists previously thought.” Carbon is the main component of life, and carbon constantly cycles between Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere as plants and animals grow and decompose. Carbon can also cycle through the Earth on a journey that takes millions of years. It begins at tectonic subduction zones where the relatively thin tectonic plates atop oceans are dragged down below thicker plates that sit atop continents.
“But life is lazy, and if something’s heavier — even that tiny bit — it’s harder to move,” Torres said. “So life prefers the lighter isotope, carbon-12. And if you grow a plant and give it CO2, it will actually preferentially take up the lighter isotope. That means the ratio of carbon-13 to -12 in the plant is going to be lower — contain less 13 — than in the CO2 you fed the plant.”
The job of compiling data from IODP expeditions fell to study first author, Ziye Li of Bremen, who was then a visiting student in Zhang’s lab at A&M.“Our new results are very different — they’re the opposite of what the isotope calculations are suggesting,” he said.
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