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Yet in spite of all these factors, the ocean reniains inadequately described and poorly 

 understood as a system. Ignorance about our oceans translates into major ignorance about 

 our planet In spite of major advances since 1950, the ocean remains a major frontier in 

 science. Much of the ocean environment is remote, cold and dark. It is not an easy 

 environment to work in and on, especially if you get seasick! Its v/orkings are poorly 

 imderstood. It is not a simple system and interacts in complex ways with the other 

 components of the Earth system. For the first time, the Earth is beLag studied by scientists 

 as a system of closely integrated components. Science and Technology have now evolved 

 sufficiently to begin to imravel the complex processes that dominate the life-sustaining 

 Earth, including how human activities may influence change. The Earth is a linked system 

 - change one part and another part is changed. However, much ignorance remains about 

 such linkages and feedbacks and about processes that control weather variability, climate 

 change on various time scales, global change in the geological past, ocean sediment 

 processes and associated mineral and hydrocarbon resources on continental margins, and 

 the processes that govern biological cycling in the ocean. In effect, we need to better 

 understand the role of the ocean and its marine biota and their role in the Earth system. 



Kfarine scientists at UC Santa Barbara continue to contribute toward better understanding 

 of our ocean and the related workings of our planet. We are able to work in a remarkable 

 natural marine laboratory right on our doorstep. The marine enviroiunent of the Santa 

 Barbara Channel and California Current system is providing us vdth an astonishingly dear 

 window to view the workings of the global ocean and climate system. It appears to 

 amplify global signals. Investigations by campus scientists working in this natural 

 laboratory are leading to important and exdting discoveries. For example, we have 

 recently discovered in the drilled sedimentary record of the Santa Barbara Basin (drilled by 

 the Ocean Drilling Program), evidence for many major, rapid sea-surface warming events 

 in the recent geologic past that occurred within human life spans. These correlate with 

 similar rapid warming events recorded in the Greenland Ice Sheet on the other side of the 

 globe. Our results suggest a high sensitivity of the vast Pacific Ocean to change in the 

 global climate system. Considerable energy was required to cause these rapid warming 

 events. We believe that we have discovered the cause of these rapid warming evente; Le., 

 where this energy came from. Our geochemical results suggest that the warmings were 

 possibly caused by major releases of large volumes of methane (natural gas) from ocean 

 sediments on the continental margins due to the melting of gas hydrates, or dathrates, 

 frozen writhin the sediments. At the relatively high pressures in d\e ocean, a mixture of 

 methane and water freezes at particular ocean floor temperatures. Our data suggest that 

 the ocean periodically burped methane, leading to rapid greenhouse warming. This work 

 is new and surprising and our hypothesis remains to be independently tested and verified. 

 We discovered these features first because the Santa Barbara Basin sediment record acts as 

 a powerful telescope aimed at the marine climate record. Our results also highlight the fact 

 that we still know little about major processes occurring in the ocean and interrelations 

 with the Earth system. Expect major svirprises in the future! 



Our work also helps highlight the importance of dathrates as an enormous, but poorly 

 known energy resource. Qathrates store large volujnes of organic carbon. Estimates of the 



