@mike_malaska@deepspace.social
2026-03-11 01:14 UTC
Very neat article examining how calcium carbonate gets dissolved in oceans, sequestering away CO2 into the deep cold ocean.
Borer et al., Microbially enhanced dissolution of calcite in sinking marine particles. PNAS, 2026,
Came out yesterday, so this is pretty fresh Science!
UPDATED: Link to free version (thanks to @Artemis201 for finding this!) https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/165057/ParticleDissolution_borer_PNAS_Revision2_FiguresWithin.pdf
So...what is happening? Why should we care?
This touches a lot of sciences:
#karst #geology #chemistry #biology
Replies (2)
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@mike_malaska@deepspace.social 2026-03-11 01:18
We'll get to the BIG DEAL first: Why is it important? Earth Ocean is BIG. Massive reservoir for stuff. Atmospheric gases in equilibrium. On the plus side, CO2 can get sucked down, scrubbed from atmosphere. On the negative side, if this doesn't happen and it comes back out, that's bad. So oceans buffer temperatures and gases (like CO2). Figuring out the HOW carbonates, CO2 balance out and move and where they go in the ocean is part of the big climate budget. This article looks at the HOW.
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@Artemis201@mstdn.social 2026-03-11 01:56
@mike_malaska Looks like this might be an open access version: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/165057