Global ocean sinking carbon flux and variability

通过下沉颗粒在深海中长期储存碳是全球碳循环的关键部分，在设定大气二氧化碳水平、推动海洋脱氧和向深海生态系统提供食物方面发挥着关键作用。GLOBESINK的目的是提高我们回答这个大问题的能力：“未来海洋颗粒下沉的碳储存将如何变化？”".答案可能对气候、渔业和生物多样性产生广泛影响。GLOBESINK将使用一种新的“大数据”方法来解决这个大问题。第一步将是大幅增加海洋中下沉粒子通量测量的数量，大约增加10倍。GLOBESINK将通过将自己的创新统计方法应用于由200多个漂流水下机器人组成的新全球舰队进行的数千万个粒子测量来实现这一目标。使用这个新的数据集，GLOBESINK将直接计算全球碳储存总量，以及过去十年中这一数量在时间和空间上的变化。这些信息将与颗粒尺寸、颗粒破碎率、温度和氧气浓度的关键测量相结合，所有这些都被假设为碳储存的重要驱动因素，以评估这些驱动因素是否以及如何被纳入全球气候模型。

The long-term storage of carbon in the deep ocean by sinking particles is a key piece of the global carbon cycle, playing a critical role in setting atmospheric CO2 levels, driving ocean de-oxygenation, and delivering food to deep ocean ecosystems. The aim of GLOBESINK is to improve our ability to answer the big question: "How will storage of carbon by sinking ocean particles change in the future?". The answer could have wide-reaching impacts on climate, fisheries, and biodiversity. GLOBESINK will attack this big question using a new "big data" approach. The first step will be to dramatically increase the number of sinking particle flux measurements in the ocean, by approximately 10-fold. GLOBESINK will achieve this by applying its own innovative statistical methods to 10s of millions of particle measurements made by a new global fleet of over 200 drifting underwater robots. Using this new dataset, GLOBESINK will directly calculate the total global carbon stored and how this amount has varied in time and space over the past decade. This information will be combined with key measurements of particle size, rate of particle breakup, temperature, and oxygen concentration, all hypothesised to be important drivers of carbon storage, in order to assess whether and how these drivers should be included in global climate models.