Sea beds can provide information about present climatic change

In a new research, scientists have determined that sea beds have accumulated information about the greenhouse effect for millions of years, which can lead to better understanding of the present climatic change.

Climatic change is connected at present with the phenomenon of global warming. This is characterized by the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2 gas), which produces the reduction of heat emission to the space and provokes a higher global warming.

Although gases in the atmosphere tell us about this greenhouse effect, oceans have accumulated information for millions of years, which allow us a better understanding of this phenomenon.

In this process, which involves a better knowledge of carbon cycle in the sea, scientist David Gallego Torres developed the research work, under the supervision of Professors Francisca Martinez Ruiz and Miguel Ortega Huertas of the University of Granada.

«Oceans may act as a drain of carbon, in the way of inorganic carbonates or as organic matter settled in sediments,» said Gallego Torres, who did research, among other phenomena, into the accumulation of organic matter in the geological past (Plioceno-Holoceno), in the East of the Mediterranean.

According to the researcher, «for the carrying out of this work, we applied different techniques of geochemical analysis, mineralogy and isotopic analysis of organic matter for the reconstruction of the paleoceanographic conditions, which induced to the accumulation of organic matter in marine sediments, its implications in the carbon cycle and, consequently, in the climatic variation in the Mediterranean area and in the African craton, the main source of nutrients of these sediments.»

«The analysis research line of the climatic variability in the geological past provides scenes of climatic changes which help us to understand the answers of the components of the climatic system in future,» according to Professor Francisca Martinez Ruiz.

Gallego Torres said that one of the main conclusions of his research is that «climatic fluctuations affect the marine environment in such a way that there may be a carbon taking by organic matter, due to these changes in marine environment\’s oceanography, in such a way that the organic matter would remain accumulated again in the earth\’s crust of sediments and would remain there for a while.»

Another conclusion of the research is that the accumulation of organic matter in marine sediments is mainly connected with an intensification of marine productivity.
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