@mike_malaska@deepspace.social
2026-03-11 01:30 UTC
In the ocean as you go deeper, CO2 capacity goes up.
Gas solubility goes up in colder water.
And gas solubility goes up in water at higher pressure.
So both those effects let more CO2 go into water, and then let more CaCO3 dissolve. (see 3rd post).
So you'd think that any CaCO3 in form of calcite (aragonite even more soluble because it's not the most stable form) would dissolve as you go deeper.
But....
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@mike_malaska@deepspace.social 2026-03-11 01:35
...it turns out even more CaCO3 dissolves than you'd expect. At some point in the deep ocean, it is so cold and so high pressure, that CaCO3 will dissolve, in tropical waters that is about 4 km down, in polar waters about 1 km down. But in practice, it seems that more and faster and shallower calcium dissolution is happening than you'd expect. But....why??? And it turns out, like all fun geology, it's pretty much driven by BIOLOGY. Specifically, little microbes.