@mike_malaska@deepspace.social
2026-03-11 01:47 UTC
Right there in the middle you have the perfect optimum:
Fast enough delivery of dissolved oxygen to support good microbial metabolism (and CO2 release) but not so fast that the CO2 released gets flushed away. You can local high concentrations that just dissolve up any calcite (or aragonite).
Replies (1)
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@mike_malaska@deepspace.social 2026-03-11 01:52
The authors did a neat job of putting this all together to show us the HOW and WHY this happens in our oceans. In a sterile world, this might happen a bit as we'd expect from inorganic chemistry. On Earth, with abundant microbes, we get this feedback of microbial growth, metabolism, and localized CO2 concentration that promotes dissolution of descending carbonates faster and shallower than expected, helping sequester CO2 away into the deeper ocean reservoirs. Thanks, microbes! [/end thread]