Last edited 16 Apr 2025

Biological pump

Climate Change 2021 – The Physical Science Basis, Annex VII: Glossary, written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, defines a biological pump or carbon pump as: ‘A series of ocean processes through which inorganic carbon (as carbon dioxide, CO2) is fixed as organic matter by photosynthesis in sunlit surface water and then transported to the ocean interior, and possibly the sediment, resulting in the storage of carbon.’

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