The EU Horizon Europe “OCEAN-ICU: Improving Carbon Understanding” project addresses the call “HORIZON-CL6-2022-CLIMATE-01-02: Understanding the ocean carbon (C) cycle.” This call highlights the critical role of the ocean in regulating the global climate by absorbing approximately 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and storing significant amounts of carbon in its interior through various processes, primarily known as the Biological Carbon Pump (BCP).
By measuring key processes related to the carbon sink and evaluating their overall importance, OCEAN-ICU will integrate these findings into models that inform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process. This approach aims to help resolve observed discrepancies between model predictions and data in ocean carbon sink estimations.
This project, involving 31 partners from 13 countries, includes the Institute of Marine Sciences at METU (Middle East Technical University) as a partner. It seeks to leverage fundamental knowledge of biological systems to assess how human interventions in the ocean can alter the carbon cycle. Additionally, it aims to develop management tools that address the tension between resource extraction and carbon storage.
Keywords: carbon cycle, climate change, ocean acidification, decision support tool, machine learning, Green Deal
