New Carbon Explorer Rides the Storm
Source: LBNL TABL & Berkeley Lab News Center
Autonomous Carbon Explorers, robotic floats devised by Jim Bishop and his colleagues in the Earth Sciences and Engineering Divisions and other collaborators, descend a kilometer beneath the surface and then return to report their findings via satellite. In the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans they’ve gathered carbon-cycle data that would be unaffordable or even impossible to obtain from shipboard. Now a new breed of Carbon Flux Explorer has gone to sea, not only measuring day-by-day variations in biomass, but determining exactly what’s in the sediment, essential knowledge for understanding the ocean carbon cycle.
