PhD position: BEYOND the known drivers of marine carbonate mineral dissolution

This vacancy is the result of the collaboration between Utrecht University and NIOZ. The Department of Ocean Systems (OCS) at NIOZ (Texel) is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate holding a Masters degree in Geology/Earth Sciences, Chemistry, Oceanography, Environmental Sciences, or a related field.

The Project
Many marine organisms secrete carbonate minerals, and their post-mortem dissolution mitigates climate change and ocean acidification by neutralising excess CO2. Current dissolution models are based on seawater’s saturation state (Ω). However, these models cannot explain a large gap in the biogeochemical alkalinity budget that indicates that dissolution happens where Ω suggests it cannot. Furthermore, preliminary experiments show that aspects of seawater composition not captured by Ω have an unsuspected influence on dissolution. The main aim of this project, called BEYΩND, is to progress ‘beyond Ω’ by determining how these aspects affect dissolution in the ocean, with implications for the carbon cycle and Earth’s resilience to rising CO2. The approach will include a variety of laboratory work (e.g. seawater chemistry measurements, atomic force microscopy, dissolution experiments), fieldwork (research cruise) and computational modelling (e.g. COMSOL Multiphysics, Python, transport matrix modelling). Training will be provided for each aspect. The principal supervisors are Dr Matthew Humphreys (NIOZ Texel) and Dr Mariëtte Wolthers (UU), and the work will be supported by Dr Olivier Sulpis (UU), Dr Helen King (UU) and Dr Jamie Wilson (University of Bristol).