By DIVE Staff
The UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has announced it has received new funding which will enable it to commission a fleet of autonomous underwater robots to collect data relating to how carbon dioxide is stored within the marine environment.
NERC’s ‘BIO-Carbon’ initiative, funded via its Net Zero Oceanographic Capability (NZOC) programme, is part of an ambitious long-term project to reduce the carbon footprint of marine research, ordinarily carried out from ship-based platforms.
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The data collected by the robots will be used to investigate three main areas of research: how marine life affects the potential for seawater to absorb CO2; at what rate photosynthesis by phytoplankton turns CO2 into organic matter; and how climate change will affect the future of carbon sequestration within the oceans and the rate at which the gas is returned to the atmosphere.
Long-term, NERC aims to have an operating fleet of robots consisting of more than 200 ocean gliders, 25 long-range autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), 2 short-range AUVs and smaller robots deployable by hand, by 2035.
‘The BIO-Carbon mission will add considerably to what we can achieve, providing a new set of powerful tools while pioneering a low carbon emissions approach to environmental science,’ said Dr Adrian Martin, BIO-Carbon Champion at the National Oceanographic Centre. ‘It is great to see the UK leading the way in this responsible approach to research given the UK’s drive to net zero carbon emissions.’
