Latest Iron fertilization Stories
A team of scientists is studying the complex ocean upwelling process by mimicking nature "“ pumping cold, nutrient-rich water from deep within the Pacific Ocean and releasing it into surface waters near Hawaii that lack the nitrogen and phosphorous necessary to support high biological production.The researchers are harnessing the power of the ocean to conduct their experiments, using the up-and-down motion of waves to pump deep water to the surface. Their next step is to create a pump that...
A seasonal bloom of ocean plankton is pulling more carbon dioxide than previously thought from the atmosphere into the Atlantic Ocean, U.S. researchers said. The bloom -- nurtured by the Amazon River -- may be enough to turn the tropical Atlantic from a net source of atmospheric carbon into a net carbon sink that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, New Scientist reported. Ajit Subramaniam, an oceanographer at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., and his colleagues...
Is the Dust-Storm Theory Overblown? Most oceanographers have assumed that, in the areas of the world's oceans known as High Nutrient, Low Chlorophyll (HNLC) regions, the iron needed to fertilize infrequent plankton blooms comes almost entirely from wind-blown dust. Phoebe Lam and James Bishop of the Earth Sciences Division at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have now shown that in the North Pacific, at least, it just isn't so. In a forthcoming issue of...
Each year, long-distance winds drop up to 900 million tons of dust from deserts and other parts of the land into the oceans. Scientists suspect this phenomenon connects to global climate - but exactly how, remains a question. Now a big piece of the puzzle has fallen into place, with a study showing that the amount of dust entering the equatorial Pacific peaks sharply during repeated ice ages, then declines when climate warms. The researchers say it cements the theory that atmospheric...
Imagine a gigantic, inflatable, sausage-like bag capable of storing 160 million tonnes of CO2 "“ the equivalent of 2.2 days of current global emissions. Now try to picture that container, measuring up to 100 metres in radius and several kilometres long, resting benignly on the seabed more than 3 kilometres below the ocean's surface.At first blush, this might appear like science fiction, but it's an idea that gets serious attention from Dr. David Keith, one of Canada's foremost experts on...
WASHINGTON -- Crazy-sounding ideas for saving the planet are getting a serious look from top scientists, a sign of their fears about global warming and the desire for an insurance policy in case things get worse.How crazy?There's the man-made "volcano" that shoots gigatons of sulfur high into the air. The space "sun shade" made of trillions of little reflectors between Earth and sun, slightly lowering the planet's temperature. The forest of ugly artificial...
Because grasslands and forests operate in complex feedback loops with both the atmosphere and soil, understanding how ecosystems respond to global changes in climate and element cycling is critical to predicting the range of global environmental changes--and attendant ecosystem responses--likely to occur. In a new study in the premier open access journal PLoS Biology Jeffrey Dukes, Christopher Field, and colleagues treated grassland plots to every possible combination of current or increased...
NASA -- Who would have thought that melting snow cover in the Himalayan Mountains could alter the ocean food chain over a thousand miles away? Well, that's just what's happening, according to a NASA-funded study appearing in this week's Science magazine. The study finds a decline in winter and spring snow cover over Southwest Asia and the Himalayan mountain range is creating the right conditions for more widespread blooms of ocean plants in the Arabian Sea. The decrease in snow cover has led...
