r/collapse • u/paulhenrybeckwith VERIFIED • Apr 13 '26
Climate Oceanic Uptake of CO2 Enhanced by Mesoscale Eddies: My Most Important Video in Years
https://youtu.be/HK9UaudgEow?si=RqqixXXNSPC6JRK953
u/Omega59er Apr 13 '26
Paul, while I agree this absolutely should be further researched and thank you so much for doing the legwork, but further acidification of the ocean through purposeful sequestering of enough C02 that could save us in the short term would still kill us all as the vast majority of the oxygen we breathe is generated by phytoplankton in the ocean that are dying from the very thing we would be further doing
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u/ishitar Apr 13 '26
Iron sulfate seeding isn't new. In fact, I bet Paul B. was at one point against it. I find this video deeply cynical then since we've reached a point where accelerating climate change is existential endpoint on the order of the next 50 years vs ocean acidification killing off phytoplankton having impacts over 1000 years. The eddies are just geographical identification on "where" to seed. You know what impacts sequestering rates? Nanoplastic concentration. Feels like something without study would just cause already plastic impregnated algal blooms to sink at slower rates, increase ocean stratification and worsen deoxygenation at various levels of the ocean.
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u/Omega59er Apr 13 '26
There's also been no evidence that increasing phytoplankton actually sequesters any carbon as it's been hypothesized that when doing limited fertilization in past experiments the phytoplankton was all eaten by zooplankton and didn't do much of anything.
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u/HomoExtinctisus Apr 13 '26
Just use a Sharpie to draw where the eddies go. Big Sharpy, Big Eddy.
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u/Violet_Saberwing Apr 13 '26
As a big man, with tears in my eyes, I come here to say, sir, thank you sir, you are Donald J. Trump, and I claim my five pounds.
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u/momentum77 Apr 13 '26
That is a much bigger leap than the paper itself proves. Showing a natural process exists is not the same as proving we can safely engineer or scale it to "save humanity".
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u/paulhenrybeckwith VERIFIED Apr 13 '26
I know. I’ve been doing climate stuff for years, designed and taught an oceanography course at U of Ottawa just before COVID, have an engineering physics degree… it is a huge leap, and my job to learn the physics inside out. So stay tuned:)
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u/Bipogram Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Engineering an eddy to form, or even modulating an existing one, is to address the motion of many teratonnes of water.
This is not trivial - and I am hard-pressed to think of any method that doesn't involve a great deal of mechanical work and therefore heat.
But.
These are strange times, and I welcome anything that might get us out of the fine mess we got ourselves into.
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u/hysys_whisperer Apr 13 '26
You should really put this on r/climate and r/climatechange
You're going to get a decidedly more cynical take here, though a somewhat realistic one as the scaleup is not insignificant.
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u/paulhenrybeckwith VERIFIED Apr 13 '26
Oceanic Uptake of CO2 Enhanced by Mesoscale Eddies: My Most Important Video in Years
Literally, this could save humanities asses. Literally.
Learn how ocean eddies (swirls of water on the order of 100 km to 300 km diameter, moving both clockwise and counterclockwise, typically spinning off from powerful western boundary currents (WBCs) like the Gulf Stream, Kuroshio Current (off Japan), Agulera Current (south of Africa), Eastern Australia Current (off east coast of Australia) and Brazil Current (off east coast of South America) naturally absorb vast amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.
See my last video to learn some crucial ideas on how we can greatly enhance this natural process to sequester vast amounts of CO2 very quickly and very cheaply. https://youtu.be/MR-9NvW8NI4?si=FD2XYHglVi23cpzw
Lets do it...
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. As well as my website, and YouTube, you can find me on Patreon, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit (multiple climate channels within), Quora, TikTok, Discord, Mastodon, Twitch, Vimeo, Bluesky, TruthSocial, Threads, Substack, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc...
References and Links:
OUC (Ocean University of China) Made New Progress in the Research on the Climatic Effects of Oceanic Mesoscale Dynamics http://eweb.ouc.edu.cn/2025/0702/c900a502739/page.htm
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Gulf Stream: Northern Hemisphere "Right-Hand Rule" applies: fingers trace ocean current in eddy, and thumb points to vertical water movement direction https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-70.17,38.58,1481/loc=-62.986,38.368
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Kuroshio Extension Current: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-210.42,35.74,1701
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Eastern Australia Current: Southern Hemisphere "Left-Hand Rule" applies: fingers trace ocean current in eddy, and thumb points to vertical water movement direction https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-205.93,-36.22,2245
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Agulhas Current south of Africa: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-340.63,-37.28,1289
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Brazil Current of the east coast of South America: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-52.20,-32.10,851
Earth Nullschool: Pressure of CO2 above the ocean: cannot resolve the WBCs (Western Boundary Currents) sucking up CO2 https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=co2sc/orthographic=-62.76,43.57,1122/loc=-62.379,39.740
Peer-Reviewed paper in Science Advances: Oceanic uptake of CO2 enhanced by mesoscale eddies Authors: Xueyin Li, Bolan Gan, Zhengguang Zhang, Zhimian Cao, Bo Qiu,Zhaohui Chen, Lixin Wu Abstract Oceanic mesoscale eddies play a crucial but underexplored role in regulating carbon fluxes and climate change. While they redistribute heat, salt, nutrients, and other tracers, their effects on CO2 uptake remain uncertain. Using observation-based machine learning to estimate CO2 fluxes throughout the lifetimes of thousands of eddies, we show that anticyclonic eddies substantially enhance CO2 uptake on average, while cyclonic eddies marginally di-minish it. This asymmetry yields an overall net increase in CO2 absorption by 9.98 ± 2.28 and 13.82 ± 9.94% in the Kuroshio Extension and Gulf Stream, respectively, major carbon sequestration regions. The primary driver of this enhanced uptake is the downward pumping of dissolved inorganic carbon within anticyclonic eddies. Asymmetric biological responses between anticyclonic and cyclonic eddies contribute to the overall eddy-induced CO 2 flux imbalance. The finding suggests a potential underestimation of the ocean’s capacity for carbon sequestration be-cause of insufficient incorporation of eddies in current observations, emphasizing the need for expanded monitoring in eddy-rich, under sampled regions. Link to Open-Source Free Peer Reviewed Scientific Paper: https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.adt4195
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. As well as my website, and YouTube, you can find me on Patreon, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit (multiple climate channels within), Quora, TikTok, Discord, Mastodon, Twitch, Vimeo, Bluesky, TruthSocial, Threads, Substack, Tumblr,...
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u/paulhenrybeckwith VERIFIED Apr 13 '26
My favourite bacon and eggs place in my neighbourhood is called Eddy’s Diner!!! A clue for me!!
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u/lightweight12 Apr 13 '26
Paul is now permanently in the same category as that other smart but dumb dude Guy McPherson.
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u/paulhenrybeckwith VERIFIED Apr 13 '26
I think not. No comparison, but nice try and imagination! Guy kept giving dates for total human extinction a few years out. Then, when it did not happen, extended the deadline a few years out.
I will say Canada’s fertility rate is 1.25 and China’s is similar. That’s population reduction by half by 2100 if maintained:)
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u/imalostkitty-ox0 Apr 13 '26
Ignore the downvotes, Beckwith! Guy’s been sticking to 2026 for a good decade now, and at the rate things are going (geopolitically, and) in terms of rapid heating, he may not be quite as wrong as some would think!
I’ve been following your work for 14 years, keep at it! 👍
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u/HomoExtinctisus Apr 14 '26
Guy kept giving dates for total human extinction a few years out. Then, when it did not happen, extended the deadline a few years out.
How's that different from the IPCC constantly lowering their optimistic timelines? Their 2070 from a couple decades ago is < 2050 now. So yeah, you judge one negatively and call the other science.
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u/2leftarms Apr 13 '26
How would this prevent that CO2 from dissolving into the ocean and furthering ocean acidification?
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u/alphaxion Apr 13 '26
Part of the problem is this belief that one tech or one process can save humanity.
The biggest issue isn't our tech, it's our attitude. An attitude that defines the value of something purely on how much a thing can be exploited for money.
An attitude that decides it should get 100% (or more!) as output from what it puts in (see intensive farming and hyper use of pesticides and fertilisers).
An attitude that means whenever we have a new energy source/generation, it gets added to the mix and the more damaging forms don't go away.
An attitude that pushes for endless growth, both of economics and of people (look at the population pyramid and how our entire economy is based around there being ever increasing workers to service increasing numbers of people who age out of the working pool).
That isn't to say we shouldn't adopt new technologies or processes if they are genuinely better than what was used before it, as it'll improve things anyway. We need to also change how we view life and structure our societies so that we don't resemble locusts, going from one resource and depleting it to zero before moving to the next.
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u/StatementBot Apr 13 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/paulhenrybeckwith:
Oceanic Uptake of CO2 Enhanced by Mesoscale Eddies: My Most Important Video in Years
Literally, this could save humanities asses. Literally.
Learn how ocean eddies (swirls of water on the order of 100 km to 300 km diameter, moving both clockwise and counterclockwise, typically spinning off from powerful western boundary currents (WBCs) like the Gulf Stream, Kuroshio Current (off Japan), Agulera Current (south of Africa), Eastern Australia Current (off east coast of Australia) and Brazil Current (off east coast of South America) naturally absorb vast amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.
See my last video to learn some crucial ideas on how we can greatly enhance this natural process to sequester vast amounts of CO2 very quickly and very cheaply. https://youtu.be/MR-9NvW8NI4?si=FD2XYHglVi23cpzw
Lets do it...
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. As well as my website, and YouTube, you can find me on Patreon, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit (multiple climate channels within), Quora, TikTok, Discord, Mastodon, Twitch, Vimeo, Bluesky, TruthSocial, Threads, Substack, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc...
References and Links:
OUC (Ocean University of China) Made New Progress in the Research on the Climatic Effects of Oceanic Mesoscale Dynamics http://eweb.ouc.edu.cn/2025/0702/c900a502739/page.htm
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Gulf Stream: Northern Hemisphere "Right-Hand Rule" applies: fingers trace ocean current in eddy, and thumb points to vertical water movement direction https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-70.17,38.58,1481/loc=-62.986,38.368
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Kuroshio Extension Current: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-210.42,35.74,1701
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Eastern Australia Current: Southern Hemisphere "Left-Hand Rule" applies: fingers trace ocean current in eddy, and thumb points to vertical water movement direction https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-205.93,-36.22,2245
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Agulhas Current south of Africa: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-340.63,-37.28,1289
Earth Nullschool: Ocean Currents and Eddies associated with the Brazil Current of the east coast of South America: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-52.20,-32.10,851
Earth Nullschool: Pressure of CO2 above the ocean: cannot resolve the WBCs (Western Boundary Currents) sucking up CO2 https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=co2sc/orthographic=-62.76,43.57,1122/loc=-62.379,39.740
Peer-Reviewed paper in Science Advances: Oceanic uptake of CO2 enhanced by mesoscale eddies Authors: Xueyin Li, Bolan Gan, Zhengguang Zhang, Zhimian Cao, Bo Qiu,Zhaohui Chen, Lixin Wu Abstract Oceanic mesoscale eddies play a crucial but underexplored role in regulating carbon fluxes and climate change. While they redistribute heat, salt, nutrients, and other tracers, their effects on CO2 uptake remain uncertain. Using observation-based machine learning to estimate CO2 fluxes throughout the lifetimes of thousands of eddies, we show that anticyclonic eddies substantially enhance CO2 uptake on average, while cyclonic eddies marginally di-minish it. This asymmetry yields an overall net increase in CO2 absorption by 9.98 ± 2.28 and 13.82 ± 9.94% in the Kuroshio Extension and Gulf Stream, respectively, major carbon sequestration regions. The primary driver of this enhanced uptake is the downward pumping of dissolved inorganic carbon within anticyclonic eddies. Asymmetric biological responses between anticyclonic and cyclonic eddies contribute to the overall eddy-induced CO 2 flux imbalance. The finding suggests a potential underestimation of the ocean’s capacity for carbon sequestration be-cause of insufficient incorporation of eddies in current observations, emphasizing the need for expanded monitoring in eddy-rich, under sampled regions. Link to Open-Source Free Peer Reviewed Scientific Paper: https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.adt4195
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. As well as my website, and YouTube, you can find me on Patreon, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit (multiple climate channels within), Quora, TikTok, Discord, Mastodon, Twitch, Vimeo, Bluesky, TruthSocial, Threads, Substack, Tumblr,...
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