The EPA could have regulated these little suckers right out of existence for changing the balance of the atmosphere.
From the National Science Foundation and Ohio State University:
Plankton key to origin of Earth’s first breathable atmosphere
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers studying the origin of Earth’s first breathable atmosphere have zeroed in on the major role played by some very unassuming creatures: plankton.
In a paper to appear in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Ohio State University researcher Matthew Saltzman and his colleagues show how plankton provided a critical link between the atmosphere and chemical isotopes stored in rocks 500 million years ago.
This work builds on the team’s earlier discovery that upheavals in the earth’s crust initiated a kind of reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ago that cooled the world’s oceans, spawned giant plankton blooms, and sent a burst of oxygen into the atmosphere.
The new study has revealed details as to how oxygen came to vanish from Earth’s ancient atmosphere during the Cambrian Period, only to return at higher levels than ever before.
It also hints at how, after mass extinctions, the returning oxygen allowed enormous amounts of new life to flourish.
Saltzman and his team were able to quantify how much oxygen was released into the atmosphere at the time, and directly link the amount of sulfur in the ancient oceans with atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide.
The result is a clearer picture of life on Earth in a time of extreme turmoil.
“We know that oxygen levels in the ocean dropped dramatically [a condition called anoxia] during the Cambrian, and that coincides with the time of a global extinction,” said Saltzman, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State.
In a paper in the journal Nature just last month, the same researchers presented the first geochemical evidence that the anoxia spread even to the world’s shallow waters.
“We still don’t know why the anoxia spread all over the world. We may never know,” Saltzman said. “But there have been many other extinction events in Earth’s history, and with the exception of those caused by meteor impacts, others likely share elements of this one – changes in the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans.”
“By getting a handle on what was happening back then, we may improve our understanding of what’s happening to the atmosphere now.”
Something enabled oxygen to re-enter the oceans and the atmosphere 500 million years ago, and the study suggests that the tiny plant and animal life forms known as plankton were key.
Plankton may be at the bottom our food chain today, but back then, they ruled the planet. There was no life on land at all. And aside from an abundance of trilobites, life in the oceans was not very diverse.
Not diverse, that is, until a geologic event that scientists call the Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion (SPICE) occurred. In previous work, Saltzman and his collaborators showed that the SPICE event was caused by the burial of huge quantities of organic matter in ocean sediments, which pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and released oxygen.
The more oxygen plankton encounter in their cells, the more selective they become for the light isotope of carbon in carbon dioxide, and absorb it into their bodies.
By studying isotopes in fossilized plankton contained in rocks found in the central United States, the Australian outback, and China, the researchers determined that the SPICE event happened around the same time as an explosion of plankton diversity known as the “plankton revolution.”
“The amount of oxygen rebounded, and so did the diversity of life,” Saltzman explained.
Other researchers have tried to gauge how much oxygen was in the air during the Cambrian, but their estimates have varied widely, from a few percent to as much as 15-20 percent.
If the higher estimates were correct, then the SPICE event would have boosted oxygen content to greater than 30 percent – or almost 50 percent richer than today’s standard of 21 percent.
This study has provided a new perspective on the matter.
“We were able to bring together independent lines of evidence that showed that if the total oxygen content was around 5-10 percent before the SPICE, then it rose to just above modern levels for the first time after the SPICE,” Saltzman said.
The study has some relevance to modern geoengineering. Scientists have begun to investigate what we can do to forestall climate change, and altering the chemistry of the oceans could help remove carbon dioxide and restore balance to the atmosphere. The ancient and humble plankton would be a necessary part of that equation, he added.
“When it comes to ancient life, they don’t sound as exciting as dinosaurs, but the plankton are critical to this story.”
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Konfacela: The total mass of plankton on the planet is greater than the total mass of humanity. Likely by several orders of magnitude. I suspect that would be true even if you tossed in the mass of our buildings and other artifacts, but admittedly haven’t done the math.
Everyone should check out the Larry Niven’s “Tales from the Draco Tavern”, particularly “The Green Marauder”.
quote
Julian, phosphorus/phosphate is limiting.
unquote
The limit on diatoms is, if I have read correctly, is frequently dissolved silica: only when the silica is exhausted can the calcareous phytos gain traction. There will, of course, be other limiting nutrients, with phosphates being spectacular in their effects in regions where other nutrients are in abundant supply. Why, we may ask, is iron used as the feed in the fertilisation experiments? Presumably the far oceans are most limited by that, but it seems unexpected.
Is it just me, or is climate science skewed towards physics, with limited curiosity about biological changes?
JF
Someone here could shed some light on this question perhaps.
To turn all oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere into CO₂ the amount of carbon needed is about 785 kg/m². It should be in a reduced form, that is, carbonate rocks don’t count. Crustal fossil fuel reserves are said to contain about 5,000 Gt carbon, which is 10 kg/m². If current atmospheric oxygen comes from reduction of CO₂ by plants (algae), there should be at least another 775 kg/m² reduced carbon buried in sediments.
Question: How is it distributed and in what form is it found in rocks? In what kind of rocks in the first place?
Julian Flood says:
February 22, 2011 at 8:00 am
Is it just me, or is climate science skewed towards physics, with limited curiosity about biological changes?
=========================================
As volcanic activity decreased, so did the silicates. Diatoms are the primary atmospheric nitrogen fixers.
Phosphorus is still limiting.
You’re right, it’s because physics is a lot easier than biological chemistry, with a whole lot less factors to consider.
That is even the way it is taught in school. Frank Millero’s Chemical Oceanography is the classic text book. But what everyone asks when they get out of school is “hey Frank, where are all those clean surfaces in the ocean where these simple chemical formulas are taking place”
Chemical Oceanography completely falls apart when you add living things to it…
This article scares me…
I see more evidence that the warmists want to start geo-engineering the Earth. Since they are incapable of even understanding what it is doing, any attempt to tinker with it is doomed to great failure.
The last person I want deciding what to change in the ocean is Al Gore or Mann…. Seriously.
John Kehr
As volcanic activity decreased, so did the silicates. Diatoms are the primary atmospheric nitrogen fixers.
Phosphorus is still limiting.
Just got back from the ASLO aquatic sciences meetings. I’ve never heard of diatoms fixng nitrogen. In aquatic systems, that’s usually done by cyanobacteria. For a number of chemical reasons, N fixation is easier in freshwater and more limited in marine environments, where N is often limiting.
All part of an elaborate plan to steal the Krusty Krab’s secret formula…
Bill, cyano is the endosymbiont.
Pound for pound, diatoms win over all other pelagics.
Latitude says:February 22, 2011 at 9:38 am
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As volcanic activity decreased, so did the silicates. Diatoms are the primary atmospheric nitrogen fixers.
Phosphorus is still limiting.
unquote
Has silica run-off from agriculture altered the balance between calcareous phytos and diatoms? I’d really like to see an explanation of the cod population collapse on the Banks with the settlement of America and farming run-off involved. I _do_ like hypotheses with broad predictions and it would be pleasing to see cod fry failing because of diatom growth….
JF
JF
Well, this makes it clear that one hell of a lot more money needs to be going into geological and biological sciences, e.g. basic research about the earth and its flora and fauna, than into climatology, which seems to be a perverse form of political science.
From my perspective as a biologist, there is a great deal of research on the effects that climate change is having on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems around the world. Plants are extending their ranges northward in the northern hemisphere as are terrestrial animals. At the aquatic sciences meetings that I attended last week, there were quite a number of sessions of effects of climate change, past and present on lakes and oceans. Two of the plenary talks dealth with the Gulf of Mexico and effects of the BP blowout, while one with the consequences of declining ocean pH on animals with calcium carbonate skeletons, expecially corals and mollusks.
As someone who studies plankton, I don’t understand Anthony’s title about “pollution.” Certainly this term was not part of the original article, and an increase in the earth’s atmopheric O2 at a time when it was low hardly seems like a problem. Don’t worry, the EPA would have such a knee jerk reaction to natural processes.