Carbon Explorer Monitors Ocean Carbon

Without a method for accurately observing daily changes in ocean life cycles over vast spatial scales, scientists are unable to predict how the ocean will respond to rising CO2 levels, crippling our ability to develop accurate models of global warming or devise strategies to prevent it.

The Carbon Explorer, conceived by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s James K. Bishop in collaboration with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and WET Labs, Inc., bridges this observational gap. The device is a smart, low-cost robotic ocean float that measures carbon concentrations in the ocean. With its system of optical sensors, advanced communications devices, and remote operating capacity, the Carbon Explorer enables, for the first time, the continuous tracking of the biological processes of the ocean’s carbon cycle.

Until now, model simulations of the ocean carbon cycle, carried out using the world’s fastest and most advanced computers, were the only known way to predict the future of the ocean’s impact on climate change. The current generation of models includes biological processes, but only in a simplistic way. The observations guiding model predictions are largely based on data collected from ships, which cannot work safely in bad weather or in remote ocean locations for very long.

By contrast, Carbon Explorers have been deployed to date in some of the world’s most remote and extreme ocean environments, consistently yielding data that had never before been generated. Once placed in the water by research vessel, small boat, or aircraft, the Carbon Explorer activates and locates itself in space using signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, and then begins a mission based on a set of preprogrammed instructions. The Carbon Explorer collects temperature, salinity, and particulate carbon data at various depths down to several kilometers and sends that data to satellites overhead. The device can stay in the ocean year-round to observe variations in the ocean carbon cycle. It measures particulate organic carbon at a level of accuracy, precision, and frequency previously unachieved, and it does so in real time.

The Carbon Explorer monitors carbon levels in the ocean (Photo courtesy Alexey Mishonov, Texas A&M University)