Scientists discover groundbreaking information when it comes to climate change and organic carbon burial beneath oceans

A team of scientists from across the world has published a first-of-its-kind study of organic carbon that falls to the bottom of the ocean and ends up deep inside the planet.

The team, made up of researchers from Rice University, Texas A&M University, the University of Leeds, and the University of Bremen, analyzed data from over 50 years of seagoing scientific drilling missions, comprising more than 1,500 shipboard expeditions, according to a press release.

“What we’re finding is that burial of organic carbon is very active,” Mark Torres, an assistant professor in Rice’s Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences and co-author of the study, said in the release. “It changes a lot, and it responds to the earth's climatic system much more than scientists previously thought.”

The study, which was published in Nature, provides "the most detailed accounting to date of organic carbon burial over the past 30 million years." It also indicates that scientists still have a lot to learn about the dynamics of Earth’s long-term carbon cycle, and warns that climate warming could reduce organic carbon burial and increase the amount of carbon that’s returned to the atmosphere. 

Torres noted that most scientists believed very little has changed in 30 million years when it comes to how much carbon is buried, based on the use of isotopic ratios to measure amounts of inorganic and organic carbon at specific times in the history of the planet which had been utilized for decades, according to the press release. However, the new study's findings indicate that burial of organic carbon is very active and responds to the Earth's climatic system much more than scientists previously thought.

“Our new results are very different — they’re the opposite of what the isotope calculations are suggesting,” Yige Zhang, the paper’s corresponding author and a Texas A&M oceanographer, said in the release. “If our new records turn out to be right, then they’re going to change a lot of our understanding about the organic carbon cycle. As we warm up the ocean, it will make it harder for organic carbon to find its way to be buried in the marine sediment system.”

The team’s findings suggest that climate warming could reduce organic carbon burial and increase the amount of carbon that’s returned to the atmosphere. Zhang believes that the team’s discovery is the beginning of a potentially impactful new way to analyze data that may help in understanding and addressing climate change. The research was supported by the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund.