Accidental Deep Ocean Discovery Reveals Hidden Carbon Sink
Faculty member Tim Schroeder is co-author of the study “Mineral Carbonation of Peridotite Fueled by Magmatic Degassing and Melt Impregnation in an Oceanic Transform Fault,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Reports Sci Tech Daily:
"Scientists found that “boring” ocean faults may be quietly storing vast amounts of Earth’s carbon.
“'Studying a rock is like reading a book. The rock has a story to tell,' says Frieder Klein, an associate scientist in the Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
'That story became especially compelling when Klein and his team examined rocks collected from the underwater slopes of the St. Peter and St. Paul Archipelago, located in the St. Paul’s oceanic transform fault about 500 km off the coast of Brazil. What they uncovered points to a previously unknown process in Earth’s geological carbon cycle."