Tomorrow Today
Studio Guest – Michael Schulz on the deep sea and its secrets
Prof. Michael Schulz, MARUM is Deputy Director and Coordinator of the "Ocean and Climate" Research Area.
DW-TV: Joining us in the studio is Professor Michael Schulz. He's the vice director of MARUM and a marine geologist. Now we know: there are a lot of strange things in the deep sea. You do research yourself. What do you find most interesting? Is it the black smokers or maybe giant squids or what do you expect down there?
Michael Schulz: It's more the processes that we become aware of every time we go on a dive with a remotely operated vehicle. We find evidence for new processes that we haven't been realizing so far.
DW-TV: What do you mean by processes?
Michael Schulz: Processes for example that link microorganisms to the chemistry of the ocean
DW-TV: And you're being surprised every time you go down there?
Michael Schulz: Actually yes, because our knowledge of the deep ocean is rather limited – because we can't really look down from the surface to what's going on at the ocean floor. The new technology that we have in our hands allows us to not only observe the sea floor but to carry out experiments right at the bottom of the ocean.
DW-TV: Like a physicist doing an experiment in the lab.
Michael Schulz: Well, it's the same thing. So far we were essentially dropping equipment to the sea floor. Very often we couldn't really control where the stuff ended up and retrieval was very complicated. Now you can – it's like the gps navigator in your car: you can really find the spot again a year after deployment of some equipment.
DW-TV: Now we've heard about the methane from the sea floor. We know that methane is a very strong greenhouse gas – 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide. Do we have to fear an influence on our climate?
Michael Schulz: I don't think we have to fear an influence from these sources of methane on the climate in the next hundred years or so. The processes at the sea floor – they've been going on for millions of years, and they are sort of in a steady-state, I guess. There are some areas where there may be extended release of methane...but I think other processes.
DW-TV: But it could increase, actually with a rise in temperatures, couldn't it?
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Michael Schulz: It could increase with rising temperatures but personally I don't think that that will take place because you'd have to warm the deep sea by three degrees or so before you do that.
DW-TV: You're actually working on the relation between climate and the oceans. How big is the influence of the oceans on the climate?
Michael Schulz: It's pretty big because what the oceans actually do is they help enormously to carry heat from the tropics to high latitudes.And the currents that are responsible for that – what we know from the earth's history is that these currents can change quite rapidly and dramatically. And that is what we are a little bit concerned about.
DW-TV: What are you concerned about exactly?
Michael Schulz: Well, for example, if currents in the Atlantic Ocean do change as a result of global change, that might have an impact on drought in Africa. Because, for example, as the sea surface temperature, changes, we know also from the evidence that we have from the geological records that this controls how much rainfall falls over northern Africa.
(Interview: Ingolf Baur)
