Climate security

Trans-Atlantic research aims to unlock climate change mysteries

Scientists from six countries have teamed up on a slow boat from Newfoundland to Ireland to take a hard look at the possible effects of climate change on the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

"It's going to take a month to get there because we stop every 30 miles and lower instruments down to the sea floor and collect water, bring it back up, and measure it," said Doug Wallace, a chemical oceanographer from Halifax's Dalhousie University who is leading a team of researchers on the Celtic Explorer.

"The Atlantic is one of the most important places where the ocean sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and delivers it into the deep ocean.""Understanding this part of the ocean is really key to understanding how climate change is happening and how it will happen in the future," he said.