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Rapid plankton growth in ocean seen as sign of carbon dioxide loading
A microscopic marine alga is thriving in the North Atlantic to an extent that defies scientific predictions, suggesting swift environmental change as a result of increased carbon dioxide in the ocean, a study led a by Johns Hopkins University scientist has found. What these findings mean remains to be seen, however, as does whether the rapid growth in the tiny plankton's population is good or bad news for the planet. Published Thursday in the journal Science, the study details a tenfold increase in the abundance of single-cell coccolithophores between 1965 and 2010, and a particularly sharp spike since the late 1990s in the population of these pale-shelled floating phytoplankton. "Something strange is happening here, and it's happening much more quickly than we thought it should," said Anand Gnanadesikan, associate professor in the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins and one of the study's five authors. Gnanadesikan said the Science report certainly is good news for creatures that eat coccolithophores, but it's not clear what those are. "What is worrisome," he said, "is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function." The result highlights the possibility of rapid ecosystem change, suggesting that prevalent models of how these systems respond to climate change may be too conservative, he said.
A microscopic marine alga is thriving in the North Atlantic to an extent that defies scientific predictions, suggesting swift environmental change as a result of increased carbon dioxide in the ocean, a study led a by Johns Hopkins University scientist has found. What these findings mean remains to be seen, however, as does whether the rapid growth in the tiny plankton's population is good or bad news for the planet. Published Thursday in the journal Science, the study details a tenfold increase in the abundance of single-cell coccolithophores between 1965 and 2010, and a particularly sharp spike since the late 1990s in the population of these pale-shelled floating phytoplankton. "Something strange is happening here, and it's happening much more quickly than we thought it should," said Anand Gnanadesikan, associate professor in the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins and one of the study's five authors. Gnanadesikan said the Science report certainly is good news for creatures that eat coccolithophores, but it's not clear what those are. "What is worrisome," he said, "is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function." The result highlights the possibility of rapid ecosystem change, suggesting that prevalent models of how these systems respond to climate change may be too conservative, he said.
