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Updated: Dec 11, 2025

Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology
Published on: November 5, 2014
The value of scientific research on the ocean's biological carbon pump
Di Jin1, Porter Hoagland1, Ken O Buesseler2
1Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, United States of America.
Abstract:
The ocean's biological carbon pump (BCP) sequesters carbon from the surface to the deep ocean and seabed, constituting one of Earth's most valuable ecosystem services. Significant uncertainty exists surrounding the amounts and rates of organic carbon sequestered in the oceans, however. With improved understanding of BCP sequestration, especially its scale, world policymakers would be positioned to make more informed decisions regarding the mitigation of carbon emissions. Here, an analytical model of the economic effects of global carbon emissions-including scientific uncertainty about BCP sequestration-was developed to estimate the value of marine scientific research concerning sequestration. The discounted net economic benefit of a putative 20-year scientific research program to narrow the range of uncertainty around the amount of carbon sequestered in the ocean is on the order of $0.5 trillion (USD), depending upon the accuracy of predictions, the convexities of climate damage and economic output functions, and the initial range of uncertainty.
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