CACOON

Overview

Twitter: @CAO_CACOON

The Arctic Ocean receives huge quantities of material from the mainland via giant Arctic rivers that drain vast swathes of Eurasia and America. Climate change is causing greater quantities of water, nutrients and ancient carbon to be delivered by these rivers from land-to-ocean.

• How is carbon lost, or transformed, as it travels from land to the Arctic Ocean coast?
• How will physical and biological processes alter across estuarine and shelf systems as nutrient and carbon subsidies from land change?
• How will future change in freshwater supply and their associated carbon and nutrient loads influence how the coastal Arctic Ocean functions?

CACOON will measure poorly understood processes at the land-ocean interface and gain unique insights into the functioning of these dynamic near-shore environments. Future projections of the impacts of coastal freshening and ancient carbon supply will be produced using numerical models.

This project is co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and by UKRI NERC.

Dr Paul James Mann, lead investigator of CACOON:

The CACOON team will head to the East Siberian Shelf Sea region and sample along two of the largest Arctic rivers – the Lena and Kolyma. This region is already reacting to rapid climate warming and the amount of freshwater delivered to the ocean from the Arctic mainland is increasing here. These rivers drain landscapes containing huge stocks of carbon, currently locked up in frozen soils and ice. This carbon – that hasn’t seen light of day for thousands of years, is starting to thaw and make its way into rivers. CACOON will study what will happen to this ancient carbon as it travels from land-to-ocean. Will it simply be transported to the coast and have little impact on the biology of the Arctic Ocean, or will it affect food webs and potentially exacerbate global climate change?