PhD Studentship : Listening Out for Marine Snow, NERC GW4+ DTP PhD Studentship for September 2025 Entry

About the Partnership

This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC Great Western Four+ Doctoral Training Partnership (GW4+ DTP). The GW4+ DTP consists of the Great Western Four alliance of the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter plus five Research Organisation partners: British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the Natural History Museum and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. The partnership aims to provide a broad training in earth and environmental sciences, designed to train tomorrow’s leaders in earth and environmental science. For further details about the programme please see http://nercgw4plus.ac.uk/

Project details

For information relating to the research project please contact the lead Supervisor via K.L.Sheen@exeter.ac.uk

Project Aims and Methods

Marine life plays a key role in our climate system by facilitating the extraction and storage of atmospheric carbon into the deep ocean. Photosynthesizing plants in the surface ocean trap carbon as organic matter that eventually sinks to the abyss as ‘marine snow’ where it can be locked up for thousands of years. The measurement of sinking organic matter, for which oceanographers traditionally use moored sediment-traps, is therefore central to understanding and predicting global climate variability. However, the resolution and the longevity of such records are limited (typically monthly averaged data collected over a year at discrete locations). 

This exciting PhD project will develop a newly piloted method that uses acoustic backscatter data, a biproduct from current flow instruments, to estimate marine carbon fluxes at unprecedented resolutions (i.e. hours). The project will involve analysing coincident backscatter and sediment-trap data to quantify and understand their relationship. Laboratory-based calibration experiments or modelling studies may be used to support the analysis. Once relationships are established, data from the wider observational network of legacy current meter deployments will be used to assess global ocean carbon flux variability over the past decades. There may also be the opportunity to participate in a fieldwork at sea. 

Project partners

The National Oceanography Centre will contribute co-supervision of student, co-development of project, access to data and facilities and training. 

Training

The DTP offers funding to undertake specialist training relating to the student’s specialist area of research. 

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