TRIESTE (ITALPRESS) – Exchanges of CO2 to the interface between ocean and atmosphere vary in time and space; understanding its variability is fundamental, since carbon dioxide plays a key role in adjusting the global temperature of the planet. This is the objective of the ATL2MED mission, which, thanks to the use of state-of-the-art scientific instruments, has managed to offer observations of the flow of CO2 in an area still little studied, between the eastern Atlantic and the western Mediterranean.
The main results of this project, carried out between 2019 and 2020, are summarized in a recent study, published on Frontiers in Marine Science. The publication, dedicated to physical and biogeochemical processes, follows a 2024 research focused on the control and maintenance of high quality data standards, which appeared on Earth System Science Data. Both studies were led by the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics – OGS and involved institutions throughout Europe. For Italy, the Institute of Marine Sciences (CNR – ISMAR) of the National Research Council, the Institute for the Study of Anthropic Impacts and Sustainability in Marine Environment (CNR – IAS) and the Department of Environmental Sciences, Information and Statistics of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
“The technical and scientific success of the mission, promoted and coordinated by ICOS, also highlights the key role of research infrastructures in developing and implementing collaborative, innovative and broad-ranging projects,” said Carolina Cantoni, CNR-ISMAR’s chemical oceanographer and co-author of the study.
In particular, in southern Adriatic, where for more than twenty years more research infrastructure operate synergistically, data from the E2M3A boa were used, which is part of the EMSO infrastructure (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory), of the independent profilers of the Euro-Argo infrastructure, and of the missions conducted in the area with autonomous submarine vehicles called Ocean glider. In the Ligurian Sea, however, studies carried out by the Saildrone mission were supported by the observations of the Boa DYFAMED (OOV / OSU STAMAR) and the Boa W1M3A (CNR-IAS) while in the North Adriatic by the joint observative system of the OGS and the CNR, which through the stations C1 and PALOMA, for years has studied the marine environment of the Gulf of Trieste.
– Photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
