METEOR M84/3

During the cruise M84/3 (5 - 28 April 2011) the German research vessel METEOR sails from Istanbul (Turkey) to Vigo (Spain). The principal scientific objectives for the cruise has two closely-linked components:
i) understanding and documenting the large-scale Mediterranean water property distributions, their changes and drivers of those changes. The last few decades have seen dramatic changes in the circulation of the Mediterranean Sea. This is manifested amongst others as a shift of deep water formation from the Adriatic to the Aegean Sea. ii) Addressing questions of a future Mediterranean Sea that will increase in dissolved inorganic carbon, might become more stratified and experience changes in circulation and ventilation processes due to global warming. The characteristics of the Mediterranean Sea are such that it has the potential to sequester large amounts of anthropogenic CO2, Cant. However, few carbon data exist in the Mediterranean Sea, and very little is known about how the recent changes in circulation has affected the storage rate of Cant.
Chief scientist of cruise M84/3 is Dr Toste Tanhua (IFM-GEOMAR).