The value of scientific research on the ocean's biological carbon pump
Citable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/26192As published
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141357DOI
10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141357Keyword
Economic value of scientific research; Value of information; Biological carbon pump; Carbon sequestration; Ecosystem service; Ocean twilight zoneAbstract
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.
Description
© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Jin, D., Hoagland, P., & Buesseler, K. O. The value of scientific research on the ocean's biological carbon pump. Science of the Total Environment, 749, (2020): 141357, doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141357.
Suggested Citation
Jin, D., Hoagland, P., & Buesseler, K. O. (2020). The value of scientific research on the ocean's biological carbon pump. Science of the Total Environment, 749, 141357.The following license files are associated with this item:
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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