The former CEO of Google will finance drones to explore the raw Antarctic water

Corporation created by Eric SchmidtFormer Google CEO will fund a project to send drones to the harsh ocean around them Antarctica To collect data that can help solve the decisive climate puzzle. This project is part of a group of funding announced today from the Schmidt Sciences, which was created by Schmidt and his wife Wendy to focus on projects that deal with research in the global carbon cycle. It will spend $ 45 million over the next five years to finance these projects, which include the Antarctic Research.

“The ocean provides a really critical climate regulation service to all of us, however we do not understand it as we can,” says Galen McKinley, Professor of Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, Lamont Duhreat Earth Observatory and one of the main scientists in the project. “I am really excited to find out how much this data can combine a society of people trying to understand and ocean carbon pelvis.”

The oceans in the world are their largest carbon basins, absorption About a third of carbon dioxide puts humans in the air every year. One of the most important carbon basins is the southern ocean, the body of the surrounding water at the Antarctica University. Although it is The second smaller Among the five oceans of the world, the southern ocean is responsible for About 40 percent Of all the absorption of the ocean carbon dioxide.

However, scientists know little about why the southern ocean is exactly a successful carbon basin. Moreover, climate models that successfully predict carbon absorption in the ocean in other places of the world have diverged greatly when it comes to the southern ocean.

One of the biggest issues related to understanding more about what is going on in the Southern Ocean is just a lack of data. This is thanks to the harsh conditions in the region. The Drake Corridor, which runs between South America and Argentina, is one of the most difficult ocean extensions for ships, due to the incredibly strong currents around the Antarctica and the dangerous winds; It is more harsh in the winter months. Chris says that the ocean has a particularly clearly protective cover, which makes satellite notes difficult.

“The southern ocean is really far away, so we did not do much science there,” McKinley says. “It is a very big circumference, and it is an exciting and frightening place to go.”