Canada First Research Excellence
Fund 2022 candidate
We need to understand how energy, gases and particles are exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean. It’s not a simple process and it goes both directions. And the ultimate question is, how do they affect climate?
There is evidence that the ocean’s ability to filter carbon from the atmosphere is changing. As a result, global climate goals are likely well off the mark. With support from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Dalhousie and its academic and industry partners will find solutions and make Canada a global leader in the science to avert climate change.
Rachel Chang is an atmospheric scientist. But you won’t find her with her head in the clouds. Her focus is on the area just above the ocean’s surface, tracking how the particles that come from its waters impact the air above.
While oceanographers contributing to Dalhousie and its partners’ Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) application are consumed by the ocean’s ability to absorb the world’s carbon, Dr. Chang and her colleagues investigate the issue from above the waterline.
Together, the researchers will put unprecedented focus on how carbon is cycling in and out of the ocean, the world’s most important climate sink, allowing Canada to take the lead in ensuring global climate targets are on track with our environmental reality.
Dr. Chang says fog offers an ideal laboratory for studying the interplay between air and ocean, especially when it’s comprised of droplets formed on particles released by the sea. She focuses on these droplets because each of them is like a little floating beaker where chemical reactions take place.
Along coastlines and on ships at sea, she measures air particles before, during and after fog and collects fog water to test the chemical composition, which can help her learn where the particles originated from.
“There are all sorts of chemical reactions happening in fog, and definitely it affects carbon. But how is still yet to be discovered.”
Dalhousie University and its research partners L’Université du Québec à Rimouski, Université Laval and Memorial University are seeking support from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund to ensure the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere is accounted for in global climate goals. Together, the universities are the world’s most productive ocean research team, capable of bringing the most sophisticated science to the Earth’s most pressing challenge.
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