Joint Seminar: Tracking marine particles in the ocean’s biological carbon pump: a stochastic Lagrangian approach
At the core of the ocean’s biological carbon pump (BCP) are marine particles that transfer organic carbon from surface to depth. The BCP’s "transfer efficiency" —how deep particles sink before degradation by microbes and zooplankton— strongly affects the global carbon cycle, yet remains poorly constrained because particles are costly to observe and their dynamics are oversimplified in climate models. Here, I present a computational tool developed at Oxford that uses a stochastic Lagrangian framework to track the formation, interaction, transformation, and sinking of large numbers of individual marine particles across size, composition, and sinking-velocity spectra. Key BCP outcomes, notably transfer efficiency, emerge from an explicit representation of particle physicochemical attributes, abundances, and coagulation and encounter dynamics, rather than being prescribed. I will outline the model architecture, present comparisons to observations and preliminary global-ocean results, and discuss implications for observing strategies and climate sensitivity.
Datum
10.03.2026
Uhrzeit
15:15 h
Ort
- Bundesstr. 53, room 022/023
- Seminar Room 022/023, Ground Floor, Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Hamburg
Chair
- Clara Bayley