The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]
Photosynthesis springs a surprise. Why not find out what nature is doing before accusing humans of altering the global climate?
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A new study demonstrates the important role of a common group of marine calcifying phytoplankton (coccolithophores) in the regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere, says Phys.org.
The ocean has removed roughly a third of the CO2 released by humans since the Industrial Revolution.
It is one of the largest sinks of anthropogenic CO2 and the largest reservoir of carbon that can easily exchange with the atmosphere on our planet.
Understanding the processes that control the exchange of carbon between the ocean and atmosphere is key for projecting the future effects of carbon dioxide on climate change, ocean acidification, marine organisms, and society.
Research led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) in collaboration with an international scientific team discovered that the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and ocean is highly modulated by a unique group of photosynthesizing plankton called coccolithophores.
These common microscopic organisms which live in the sun-lit layer of the world’s oceans form elaborate plates of the carbon bearing mineral calcium carbonate. These layers are visible, for example, in places like the White Cliffs of Dover.
In the study published today in the journal Nature Communications, the team co-led by ICREA research professor Dr. Patrizia Ziveri at the ICTA-UAB found that coccolithophores dominate the production of CaCO3.
Coccolithophores are tiny algae which measure less than one hundredth of a millimeter and form the basis of the aquatic food web and contribute to the regulation of atmospheric CO2 levels through calcification and photosynthesis.
The study shows coccolithophores comprise 90% of the total production of CaCO3 in the surface ocean, indicating they play a key role in controlling ocean chemistry and CO2. This research highlights that the other two main planktonic calcifying groups, zooplankton (pteropods) and foraminifera, play a secondary role in the context of atmospheric CO2 modulation.
The study also revealed that rather than sinking into the deep ocean, a large portion of this CaCO3 dissolves close to the surface where carbon is more readily exchanged with the atmosphere and where sunlight penetrates the surface (photic zone).
“This extensive shallow dissolution explains the apparent discrepancy between previous estimates of CaCO3 production derived from satellite observations/biogeochemical modeling versus sinking particle estimates from shallow sediment traps,” explains Ziveri, who clarifies that the finding suggests that the processes driving shallow CaCO3 dissolution are key to understanding the role of planktonic calcifiers in regulating atmospheric CO2. This is important as more dissolution will increase the ability of water to hold CO2.
Dr. William Gray, a research scientist at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement who co-led the study, explains, “The dissolution of so much CaCO3 close to the ocean’s surface shows the exchange of carbon between the ocean and atmosphere is much more complicated than we first thought. Until we better understand the processes driving this shallow dissolution, it will be difficult to predict how the ocean will uptake carbon in the future.”
Full article here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Is it me or are we to believe that vast quantities of soot (Carbon) is getting into the oceans?
Perhaps they mean Carbon Dioxide ?
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
“than we first thought”. What an optimism. Do you really call it “thinking”?
Ah, coccolithophores…
A couple of links here from my historical collection, both from 2015:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaa8026
Click to access Climate-Change-My-View.pdf
As to “The ocean has removed roughly a third of the CO2 released by humans since the Industrial Revolution”, in fact as all the atmospheric CO2 is part of a cycle, the oceans have removed all of it.
This is clear from the observation that atmospheric CO2 concentration lags and does not lead global temperature variation.
catweazles’s science.org link:
Our study shows a long-term basin-scale increase in coccolithophores and suggests that increasing CO2 and temperature have accelerated the growth of a phytoplankton group that is important for carbon cycling.
Nature is on the case, no worries 🙂
I have never believed my barbecue, lawn mower, or cars are heating up the planet beyond the planet’s ability to deal with it relative to the effects of the sun’s variability, cosmic ray variability, and orbital/celestial variability, and perhaps other inputs and sinks.
It’s the ultimate arrogance of man that he thinks he has more power than nature. Even after pollution by chloroflurocarbons, the planet has recovered it’s ozone and even after a nuclear war, the dust would settle and the planet restore it’s natural balance. Nature is far more powerful than man.
As for phytoplankton, this tiny organism is the route to unlimited fossil fuels in the future. The HMLC zones in the oceans need to be tended as any farm. Fertilized by iron and then harvested as any whale would so that the hydrocarbons can be processed using methanogenesis into any by product of methane.
Oil was the product of ambundant sea life in the planet’s past. It took millions of years to convert the dead creatures into oil, but man can bypass that time by harvesting crops of plankton and then turning that sludge into gas which can be processed into any hydrocarbon we need to run our society. We don’t need to dispose of the fossil fuel energy market. We simply need to adapt to a new source of carbon – the source that exists already in our oceans.
“Even after pollution by chloroflurocarbons, the planet has recovered it’s ozone”
It doesn’t appear to have done so actually, and it is becoming increasingly evident that there was unlikely to have been an anthropologically problem in the first place.
Tropical ozone hole found to be seven times larger than Antarctica’s
https://www.yourweather.co.uk/news/trending/tropical-ozone-hole-larger-than-antarctica-s-atmosphere.html#:~:text=The%20research%20revealed%20a%20large,an%20altitude%20above%2025%20km.
These bits are interesting:
“The implementation of the Montreal Protocol has led to a decrease in ozone-depleting substances in the stratosphere (the second layer of the atmosphere) since 1994. However, an ozone hole over the Arctic reached a record size in 2020, while the ozone holes over Antarctica in 2020 and 2021 were among the largest, deepest and most persistent ever recorded.
And it doesn’t stop there! The journal AIP Advances has published a challenging study related to the search for the “tropical ozone hole”. It has been a big challenge, because unlike polar ozone holes, which are seasonal and appear mainly in spring, a tropical ozone hole remains essentially unchanged throughout the seasons. This makes it ‘invisible’ in previously observed data.
The research revealed a large permanent ozone hole in the lower stratosphere over the tropics (30° N – 30° S) that has existed since the 1980s.
Furthermore, unlike in the polar regions, the tropical ozone layer is mainly found in the stratosphere at an altitude above 25 km. Only a relatively small percentage (between 25% and 30%) of the total ozone is distributed in the lower tropical stratosphere (between 10 and 25 km altitude).”
Also:
“Observation of large and all-season ozone losses over the tropics”
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0094629
Where we find:
“The results strongly indicate that both Antarctic and tropical O3 holes must arise from an identical physical mechanism, for which the cosmic-ray-driven electron reaction model shows good agreement with observations.”
Don’t you just love this “settled science”?