Earth Systems
Research Professor
- Bergen
jetj@norceresearch.no
+47 56 10 75 59
Ocean biogeochemistry
How does the climate change affects us
Emissions from human (anthropogenic) activity are constantly increasing and climate change is becoming more and more pervasive. Against this backdrop, it is urgent to gain sufficient knowledge about how climate change affects us and the society in which we live, and what opportunities we have to mitigate the most serious effects of climate change.
Research on ocean biogeochemistry helps solve these issues, and with the help of our tools, observations and models, we study both natural and man-made changes in the ocean.
Our research focuses on how climate change affects the sea’s uptake of carbon and the impact on marine ecosystems, where ocean acidification and deoxygenation are examples of stress factors. Our goal is to deliver high-quality research and this includes knowledge about how the sea's carbon cycle and stress factors for ecosystems change in prehistoric times, in the present and in the future. The research group are active users of new analytical tools such as machine learning. It is associated with a network of users of large amounts of data (Big Data). The goal is to improve data analyses from model runs where several models are connected and also deliver more secure predictions of how the climate will be in the future.
Our research group plays a key role in national infrastructure projects such as ICOS Norway (marine carbon data measurements) and INES (earth system modelling). We regularly contribute to high-profile international initiatives and projects such as Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP) and the Global Carbon Project (GCP). Through national and international projects, we use our expertise to investigate how the effects of climate change can be mitigated in the future and how we can make risk assessments of marine ecosystems, including aquaculture and coral reefs.
Strategic objectives:
- To confirm and improve our mechanistic understanding of how the ocean's carbon cycle is changing, and what role this has played for the climate in prehistoric times and up to the present day.
- To study traces of past and present climate change in ocean biogeochemistry using data from large observation networks and a variety of modelling tools.
- To assess how realistic it is to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the ocean's carbon cycle and ecosystem, in light of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.