RRS James Cook Cruise JC180 25 April - 30 May 2019. Strategies for the Environmental Monitoring of Marine Carbon Capture and Storage, STEMM-CCS

JC180 is the main experimental cruise component of the EC funded €16m project Strategies for the environmental monitoring of marine carbon capture and storage STEMM-CCS. The overall goals of the STEMM-CCS project are to develop techniques and methods to constrain potential leakage pathways for CO2 should it be stored in reservoirs and to develop techniques to detect and quantify CO2 release from the seabed should it leak from storage reservoirs in the future if they are developed on a commercial scale in the North Sea. This cruise, and the whole project aims to increase the confidence the science community and the public have as we move towards using old hydrocarbon reservoirs for CO2 storage to mitigate climate change. If we use these storage sites we need to ensure that should they leak we will be able to detect any leakage and quantify it.