Source: Press release DESARC – MARESANUS

Milan, 18 March 2019 – The research project “DESARC-MARESANUS – DEcreasing Seawater Acidification Removing Carbon” address two key environmental issues of great concern: the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the resulting ocean acidification.

More in detail, the project aims at developing a methodology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and at the same time tackle ocean acidification. This method has been studied at Politecnico di Milano and has been already described in a study recently published on Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change journal; the method uses biomasses to produce compounds able to decrease ocean acidity levels. The research activities of the project are focused on a detailed assessment of the technical and economic feasibility of this methodology while evaluating the benefits for the marine environment and the maritime sector, with a special focus on the Mediterranean Sea.

The CMCC Foundation is involved in the project with the Ocean modeling and Data Assimilation Division; CMCC researchers will in particular explore the potential contribution of the process to the decrease of the ocean acidification trend in the Mediterranean Sea while removing at the same time CO2 from the atmosphere, evaluating different strategies.
Dr. Simona Masina, Director of the Ocean modeling and Data Assimilation (ODA) Division, said: “the project DESARC-MARESANUS will allow us to estimate for the first time the Mediterranean Sea response to the alkalization process as a possible tool to reduce ocean acidification and remove CO2 from the atmosphere”.

Prof. Stefano Caserini, Prof. of Climate change mitigation at the Politecnico di Milano and Principal Investigator of this research, highlighted: “DESARC-MARESANUS is a research project important to start the great effort needed to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and to pursue ambitious scenarios to limit global warming”.

Prof. Mario Grosso (Politecnico di Milano), added: “the research is focused on one of the frontier issues of climate change research: we want to raise ambition on climate change and study a technology able to achieve negative emissions, that is the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. It’s something certainly pioneering, but essential to stabilize the climate system”.

For more information, read the press release in Italian and visit the official website of the project.