GO-BGC Array funded by NSF: Biogeochemical floats go global!

Oct. 29, 2020

BGC floats are going global!  The National Science Foundation has announced the award of a $53 million grant to expand SOCCOM’s pilot biogeochemical float array to the global ocean – see the Science story below:

Fleet of robotic probes will monitor global warming’s impact on microscopic ocean life

By Paul Voosen

Oct. 29, 2020 , 10:00 AM

A single drop of seawater holds millions of phytoplankton, a mix of algae, bacteria, and protocellular creatures. Across the world’s oceans these photosynthesizing microbes pump out more than half of the planet’s oxygen, while slowing climate change by capturing an estimated 25% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released from humanity’s burning of fossil fuels. But the scale of this vital chemistry is mostly a guess, and there’s little sense of how it will change as temperatures rise. “What’s happening out there? We have no idea really,” says Susan Wijffels, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. [read more]