Sabrina Hohmann

Being hooked on cli­ma­te stu­dies and ma­ri­ne mi­cro­paleon­to­lo­gy sin­ce the first se­mes­ter of my Ba­che­l­or’s studies I de­ci­ded to dive de­eper into this field of re­se­arch. To­day, I am a PhD stu­dent at MARUM, working on cli­ma­te chan­ge by analyzing eco­sys­tems and their re­s­pon­se to chan­ging en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­ti­ons.
Sin­ce the start of the in­dus­tri­al re­vo­lu­ti­on, at­mo­s­phe­ric CO2 has in­crea­sed by around 100 ppm due to a ri­sing in­put of an­thro­po­ge­nic re­leased car­bon di­oxi­de. The con­cern about the ri­sing pro­por­ti­on of the green­hou­se gas has heigh­te­ned du­ring the last de­ca­des, sin­ce chan­ges in the con­cen­tra­ti­on of at­mo­s­phe­ric CO2 and sur­face air tem­pe­ra­tu­re are clo­se­ly re­la­ted. Howe­ver, the oce­ans can store lar­ge amounts of car­bon di­oxi­de and act as a re­ser­voir for car­bon. The­re­fo­re, the in­crea­se in at­mo­s­phe­ric CO2 only re­flects about 70% of the to­tal an­thro­po­ge­nic-ad­ded gas, sin­ce much of the rest has been ta­ken up by the oce­ans. Con­tem­pla­ting this, even small chan­ges in the oce­an re­ser­voir or its dri­ving forces can have a si­gni­fi­cant im­pact on the con­cen­tra­ti­on of at­mo­s­phe­ric car­bon di­oxi­de. To de­ter­mi­ne the im­pacts am­pli­tu­de and the dri­ving forces be­hind such chan­ges, an un­der­stan­ding of the glo­bal car­bon cy­cle is ne­cessa­ry. Sin­ce ma­ri­ne pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion is an im­portant part and con­trol­ling me­cha­nism of the ma­ri­ne car­bon cy­cle, an un­der­stan­ding of the re­s­pon­ses of the eco­sys­tems, i.e. ocea­nic bio­pro­duc­tivi­ty is es­sen­ti­al.

As im­portant as bio­tic re­s­pon­ses to chan­ging en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­ti­ons are the re­s­pon­ses of hu­man kind to our on­go­ing glo­bal cli­ma­te chan­ge! As the fu­ture of our pla­net de­pends more than ever on po­li­ti­cal de­ci­si­ons con­cerning en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, it is an es­sen­ti­al task to com­mu­ni­ca­te the cli­ma­te chan­ge is­sue to the pu­blic. It is si­gni­fi­cant­ly im­portant to arou­se an un­der­stan­ding of the me­cha­nisms and feed­backs trig­ge­ring a chan­ging cli­ma­te and its con­se­quen­ces. I de­ci­ded to join the “Once Upon A Time” pro­ject, sin­ce it po­ses a gre­at op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­vey this to­pic to peop­le who are not usual­ly in­vol­ved in this is­sue. Es­pe­cial­ly kids are open and cu­rious for new know­ledge when it is com­mu­ni­ca­ted in an ade­qua­te way. Tel­ling an easy-to-un­der­stand sto­ry crea­tes me­mo­r­able and con­nec­ta­ble know­ledge which is es­sen­ti­al to arou­se em­pa­thy for the is­sue. Sin­ce they are the ge­ne­ra­ti­on that will have to deal with the con­se­quen­ces of cli­ma­te chan­ge, we should use pro­jects like “Once Upon A Time” to sensitize our kids for this challenge.

Here you can listen to an excerpt of my story "Eddie Earth".