An Ocean of Climate Solutions
Peter de Menocal |
TEDxBoston
• November 2022
The ocean not only sustains us, but is also our best hope for solving the climate crisis. By virtue of being a vast, deep, living fluid, the ocean stores 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere. If all of airborne human CO2 emissions were to be transferred by some process to the deep ocean, it would only increase ocean carbon content by 1%. Several processes for doing just this are being explored, some are even promising. But, there is presently no way to verify their effectiveness or assess unwanted ocean health impacts. To meet this urgent need, we are developing the Ocean Vital Signs Network - an ocean data cube twice the size of Texas, full ocean depth swarmed by an undersea armada of always-on, always communicating autonomous vehicles sensing, reporting, and tracking biochemical vital signs of ocean carbon flow and ecosystem health. Like a constellation of satellites, this deep ocean network will observe, monitor, and protect this hidden frontier with unprecedented resolution, driving a new era of collaborative ocean discovery and accelerating ocean-based climate solution science and technology.