From San Francisco State University another indication that nature is such a poor engineer that phytoplankton can’t adapt to a small change in ocean pH. But then again it is a closed lab experiment, not the ocean, and there’s those weasel words of “might”, “could”, and “may”.
Researchers explore plankton’s shifting role in deep sea carbon storage
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 13, 2011 — The tiny phytoplankton Emiliania huxleyi, invisible to the naked eye, plays an outsized role in drawing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it deep in the seas. But this role may change as ocean water becomes warmer and more acidic, according to a San Francisco State University research team.
In a study published this week in the journal Global Change Biology, SF State Assistant Professor of Biology Jonathon Stillman and colleagues show how climate-driven changes in nitrogen sources and carbon dioxide levels in seawater could work together to make Emiliania huxleyi a less effective agent of carbon storage in the deep ocean, the world’s largest carbon sink.
Changes to this massive carbon sink could have a critical effect on the planet’s future climate, Stillman said, especially as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise sharply as a result of fossil fuel burning and other human activities.
While floating free in the sunny top layers of the oceans, the phytoplankton develop elaborate plates of calcified armor called coccoliths. The coccoliths form a hard and heavy shell that eventually sinks to the ocean depths. “About 80 percent of inorganic carbon trapped down there is from coccoliths like these,” said Stillman.
Stillman and his colleagues wanted to discover how ocean acidification and changes in the ocean’s nitrogen cycle—both hallmarks of climate warming—might effect coccolith development. So they raised more than 200 generations of Emiliania huxleyi in the lab, adjusting carbon dioxide levels and the type of nitrogen in the phytoplankton’s seawater bath.
They found that high levels of carbon dioxide—which make the water more acidic—along with a shift in the prevailing nitrogen type from nitrates to ammonium—”had a synergistic effect” on the phytoplankton’s biology and growth.
In particular, coccoliths formed under conditions of high carbon dioxide and high ammonium levels were incomplete or hollow, and contained less than the usual amount of inorganic carbon, the researchers noted.
“The ratio of inorganic to organic carbon is important,” Stillman explained. “As inorganic carbon increases, it adds more ballast to the hard shell, which makes it sink and makes it more likely to be transported to the deep ocean. Without this, the carbon is more likely to be recycled into the Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Our results suggest in the future there will be overall lower amounts of calcification and overall lower amount of transport of carbon to the deep ocean,” he added.
Emiliania huxleyi typically use nitrates to make proteins, but this form of nitrogen may be in shorter supply for the phytoplankton as the world’s oceans grow warmer and more acidic, Stillman and colleagues suggest. In the open ocean, nitrates are upwelled from deep waters, but a thickening layer of warmer surface water could inhibit this upwelling. At the same time, the warmer temperatures favor bacteria that turn recycled nitrogen from surface waters and the atmosphere into ammonium, and acidification inhibits the bacteria that turn ammonium into nitrate.
“It is likely that in the future, the ocean surface will contain more ammonium,” which the phytoplankton will assimilate instead of nitrates, Stillman suggested. “Metabolizing nitrogen as ammonium versus nitrates requires different biochemical constituents that impact how well the cells make their coccoliths. They will survive just fine, but their biology will be different as a result.”
The study by Stillman and colleagues is the first to look at the intertwined effects of ocean acidification and changes in nitrogen on phytoplankton like Emiliania huxleyi. It’s also one of the first studies to observe these effects continuously over a long time scale, “so the responses of the phytoplankton are likely what we’ll see in the ocean itself,” Stillman said.
Stephane Lefebrve, the SF State postdoctoral student who developed the experiments for the study, said he is now looking for phytoplankton genes that “will help us to build the genetic blueprint of their responses to elevated carbon dioxide and a nitrogen source”
Lefebvre, Ina Benner, Alexander Parker, Michelle Drake, Pascale Rossignol, Kristine Okimura, Tomoko Komada, and Edward Carpenter, all from SF State’s Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies, were co-authors on the Global Change Biology study.
“Nitrogen source and pCO2 synergistically affect carbon allocation, growth and morphology of the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi: implications of ocean acidification for the carbon cycle,” was published online in October by the journal Global Change Biology.
Jonathon Stillman and Stephane Lefebvre may be reached by contacting Nan Broadbent at SF State: nbroadbe@sfsu.edu or at 415-338-7108.
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“Weasel words”….now THAT is worth the price of admission. Excellent!
I love it, “inorganic carbon”. These researchers call shells made by living organisms inorganic, while many geologists refer to limestone as a biodeposit.
Excellent! Less loss of CO2. Thanks, Emili!
I think the press release could be classified as a, ahem, biodeposit.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
the ocean pH will only reach 7.824 by the year 2100. This is still in the basic part and not in the acidic part. Then how can ocean water become “more acidic” if it was never acidic to begin with? Technically, I know what they are saying, but “less basic” would be more accurate. However that apparently does not sound scary enough nor does it evoke images of acid rain and dead fish.
And the effect on the carbonate compensation depth is … … ….
This process is so clear even the doziest schlub can see it.
Create some random story which involves
1. Your particular area of research interest
2. A construction of points which implies some kind of eco-problem looming
3. Some uncertainties which require further research
4. Add in that new magic ingredient “Climate Change!!”
and you will have the perfect funding application.
I wonder whether there are any branches of science which don’t try and crowbar AGW into their funding requests.
An acid donates protons.
Oceans are alkaline and becoming slightly less alkaline, their tendency to donate protons is exactly zero and has been zero throughout the Industrial revolution.
Oceans are not acidifying, they are becoming less alkaline.
Man oh man, I’m SO glad Earth has maintained an absolutley constant temperature over all the globe–regardless of height of mountain or depth of sea, polar clime or equatorial jungle.
Maybe that’s what causes “rotten ice”–it lasts just as long in the Sahara as it does in the Arctic as it does in the… Wait, are they intimating temperature is the same everywhere? They can’t be saying even the slightest itsy bitsy variation would upset the ecological balance past some tipping point beyond which there’s no return!
/sarc
As soon as one sees the phrase “more acidic” (first paragraph), you know that this is yet more puerile ‘research’, and the remainder of the article is immediately rejected by this writer.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, the phrase above is comparative, which implies that seawater is already acidic. Since when, may I ask?
Ok, let me get this straight. These plankton create different carbon-based layers depending on the amount of CO2, and that difference is the amount of inorganic carbon pulled out of the CO2 molecule and utilized in the shell making?
So, there are two types of CO2 molecules now? Organic and Inorganic? Does that mean we have two versions of Oxygen too? Organic oxygen and inorganic oxygen?
“But this role may change as ocean water becomes warmer and more acidic, according to a San Francisco State University research team.”
“Changes to this massive carbon sink could have a critical effect on the planet’s future climate, Stillman said, especially as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise sharply as a result of fossil fuel burning and other human activities.”
========================
These people making the press release are, in terms of groupthink, dumber than the Stormtroopers. There is so much circular reasoning…it becomes a vortex.
Obviously either i) they have to make homage to the Funding Gods or they wont get their money….or ii) they are just stupid.
I think it is i). And I think it is the continued Groupthink Disorder of the whole CAGW scam.
Groupthink Disorder is really a “collective” disease.
Odd. We can build rockets to the moon, but sometimes we can’t rationally think ourselves out of a paper bag.
Regards,
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Why the hell do they always want to store carbon for eternity? Once it is all stored that will be the end of all life on earth (at least life that depends on oxygen).
Only to echo the other commentators…….first, it isn’t shown the oceans are becoming less base. This should be shown, first, before we wet our pants about anything else that hinges on the ocean becoming less base. Secondly…….. inorganic carbon…….. 🙂 Ok, I’m going to resist the idea of e-mailing our friend with pages of “lol’s”, nor will I just dial the number and laugh hysterically into the phone. Instead, I’m going to play along……… if there’s such a thing as inorganic carbon, then tell me again how oil is finite? …….. naw, probably more productive just to call and laugh.
Inorganic carbon……. I love it!
This one cracks me up.
Guess now we have to have combinations of problems to create real big problems. Love what if’s.
What if I put myself in a tank with high levels of CO2 and Ammonia? Pretty sure I am not going to grow very well either.
As a reef keeper for over 30 years I have just a little bit of experience with the balancing act of carbonates and calcium as well as the aquatic nitrogen cycle.
Lets stick with their premise for a sec that we are suffering from Global Warming. As the oceans warm we will get off gassing of CO2. Most skeptics “I think” are pretty sure a big part of the increase in CO2 is this off gassing from the oceans. As the CO2 levels of the ocean drop the PH will increase. This part is just from warming of the oceans. Lets add to this the huge amount of dissolved carbonates (buffering) the oceans have. Now lets include all the calcium carbonates from all the worlds sands and reefs ” old dead sections” . If the huge buffering capacity of the ocean gets a bit low we now have calcium carbonates that will dissolve and again provided buffering to the ocean water. So basically we will have to add so much acid to the water that we dissolve all the coral reefs and sands across the vast oceans to deplete the oceans ability to buffer itself. Not Gonna Happen… Well what if we get hit by a giant comet of CO2? Guess it could happen then but who would really care.
Anyone got a link to the paper?
What is the definition of ‘high’ CO2 in their lab conditions? How do these compare to real world CO2 levels.
Also I assume the ocean pH is not homogenous throughout the world, so are there real world observations of this species in varying real ocean conditions, or perhaps experiments using different samples of ocean water.
Firstly
Secondly, I’ll see the Stillman study and raise it with the following…
Feng et al (2008)
And Halloran et al. (2008) at the same link
There is no shortage of studies that reach the opposite conclusions to that of Stillman. One just needs to go to the CO2Science web site and punch in the term Emiliania huxleyi into their search facility and spend the next few hours reading and making up ones own mind.
p.s. these critters we are talking about release Dimethylsulfides into the atmosphere, the very stuff that helps in cloud formation.
So a warming world with more sunshine hours and CO2 increases the phytoplankton cycle which increases the cloud formation nuclei.
Sounds like more of natures negative feedback to me.
I was taught that adding ammonia (though this release spoke of ammonium, an ion) to water makes it more alkaline, contra to CO2 making it less alkaline, all other things being equal.
Also, what is the source of the upwelling nitrate? Overall, in the oceans, there are many interacting oxidation-reduction rections who rates and equilibria are affected by, among other factors, temperature, ionic strength, co-factors (such as calcium ions), biogenic activity, light ….. An author simply cannot pluck out of the air an item like “upwelling nitrogen”. The full set of interacting redox reactions and cycles, as a minimum, has to be described, with uncertainties.
Athough we are reading from a press release, some accuracy is required. “Coccoliths … contained less than the usual amount of inorganic carbon” is not scientific terminology. Did they contain less than the usual amount per creature, or less than the usual amount per diameter? Were the treated coccoliths made weaker so that they died and reproduced at a different rate, one that could increase the wight of sea floor deposition?
One comes away no wiser.
Anthony says this:
another indication that nature is such a poor engineer that phytoplankton can’t adapt to a small change in ocean pH.
The article actually says this:
They will survive just fine, but their biology will be different as a result.”
The article is actually about how the balance between cell proteins and shell are affected by the carbon and nitrogen nutrient levels.
Higher CO2 levels will produce less fixed carbon that will become sediment.
In short the article is not about the survival of the plant. And the increased protein levels suggested by the research makes it a better food source in the food chain but it will upset the environments carbon budget.
Jeff D beat me to it.
These poor plankton don’t have to worry about high levels of CO2 because, according to the IPCC, the warming will cause massive outgassing of CO2 from the ocean, so the CO2 levels will be lower, not higher.
This in turn will cause massive increases in temperature, which will cause still more outgassing (a polite term for burping and farting). As the cycle reinforces itself, the plankton will obviously die, but of what? CO2 starvation? Or will the oceans boil away? Or can the plankton survive boiling? If so, for how long? Can they survive until there is no water left and then they die from drying out?
I consulted the geological record to see if there was any measure of ocean PH during those time periods when CO2 levels were in the 10,000 PPM range, but alas, I couldn’t find anything. There was supposedly one paper that was published in print form only, but when I went to the university library to review it, there was only a note that it had been withdrawn by the editor and an apology submitted to Kevin Trenberth. At the bottom it said “PS – models are being constructed to analyze this matter and will be used to determine reality”
It strikes me that “science by press release” is becoming “science for press release” and all the sloppy thinking that it contains.
Just look at how the very sloppy reasoning has crept into science by constant references to the oceans becoming more acidic. They’d have to be acidic before they can become more acidic. Of course, it just wouldn’t carry the degree of panic desired to be precise and say that the oceans are becoming less alkaline. Heck, it almost sounds benign to say that the oceans, through increased absorption of carbon dioxide, are being neutralized and are becoming less alkaline.
Come to think of it, speaking of the pH of the oceans sounds as silly as speaking of an imaginary global temperature.
Pardon, but it’s uncertain whether there is even enough carbon on the planet to turn the ocean acidic and that’s just the first mistake leading up to this paper’s failing grade. So much is wrong with this piece of “work”- where to begin? if this paper were a high school science project, I could look kindly at the authors and offer some friendly advice. However, these “scientists” don’t even rate an “E” for effort.
One of the main problems that I have in the way that scientific results are communicated these days is the phenomenon of publication by press release. Usually, there is only a hint of what the study actually found since the work has to be condensed, and since this is a press release, some popular spin is attached to the work. What is most annoying is that usually the manuscript is behind a paywall (the evil empires of Wiley et al.) and is thus not accessible for the general public to read. Even more annoying in this case is the absence of a link to the paper: I had to go searching the journal’s web site and to find it. Moreover, given the proliferation of specialized journals, I would suspect that academics in modest sized institutions would not have immediate access. I only wish the general biology community would embrace something like the arXiv in which preprints and working papers could be deposited and accessed. All that being said, there is no way for me to intelligently comment on the results of the paper.
A quick perusal of Google Scholar (the best way to find non-paywalled versions of articles) did provide some context. From a quick reading, a long standing question has been what limits the growth of these phytoplankton in high nutrient – low chlorophyll regions of the ocean. The leading suspect has been iron limitation. This reasoning follows from the observation that ammonia concentrations in HNLC regions are relatively low and thus confer an additional burden (increased requirement of reducing power) to the cells. In the absence of ammonia, cells have to reduce nitrates and nitrites to ammonia in order to assimilate nitrogen. Since Fe is used as a cofactor in the enzymes that reduce nitrates and nitrites to ammonia, the thought was that Fe-limitation limited nitrogen assimilation in high nitrate/low ammonia environments. There appears to have been much work on the physiology surrounding Fe availability and nitrogen assimilation. Unfortunately, the physiology of Emiliania huxleyi is complicated (I don’t know of any organism that has a simple physiology) and the mechanisms that determine growth rate and other physiological phenomena are poorly understood. Compounding this is the use of different isolates from different global locations that under similar conditions have a two-fold difference in maximal growth rates.
It is within this context that the quote,
“Metabolizing nitrogen as ammonium versus nitrates requires different biochemical constituents that impact how well the cells make their coccoliths.”
struck me as odd. All microbes that I am aware of prefer ammonia as their source of nitrogen. Only under severe ammonia limitation will cells turn to other pathways to assimilate nitrogen from the environment. The basic pathway is NOx –> NH3 –> glutamine –> glutamate –> amino acid, nucleotides, etc. Having ammonia present usually results in the genes for Nitrate/Nitrite reduction being turned off. Indeed, it appears that growth rate is faster when ammonia is present, and faster growing cells have an increased cell volume. In bacteria, cell volume increases as the growth rate increases for the simple fact that faster growth requires more biosynthetic machinery (think ribosomes) to make more cellular constituents (and more synthetic machinery) and cell volume has to increase to fit the extra machinery.
Reading beyond the press release and abstract, I suspect that increasing nutrient availability in the form of CO2 and NH3 leads to an increased growth rate and larger cell volume. Given our lack of understanding of this cell’s physiology and our even poorer understanding of the nutrient cycles in the ocean, I would hesitate to speculate on the consequences of increased pCO2 in the oceans. Even more tenuous is the common speculation of altered nitrogen source availability.
I would like to end by emphasizing that I fully support funding for modest research projects such as these. Gaining a better understanding of ocean nutrient cycles is an important intellectual pursuit (How does that work?) along with many other scientific endeavors. What gets lost in the din of the climate debates are the practical, closer to home applications of such basic research, for example the food web and fisheries.
harry says:
October 14, 2011 at 7:51 pm
An acid donates protons.
Oceans are alkaline and becoming slightly less alkaline, their tendency to donate protons is exactly zero and has been zero throughout the Industrial revolution.
Oceans are not acidifying, they are becoming less alkaline.
=============================
Extremely well said.
Repeated here for effect…specifically in case Slack Adolescent (you know who you are) or other blog goofballs, missed it.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
If someone wonders where all the chalk deposits (like the white cliffs of Dover and much of the underground of southern England and West France) all over the world are coming from: The same coccolith species that, according to this study, will suffer from higher CO2. They did deposit it millions of years ago during the Cretaceous (what is in a name!), when global temperatures (warm poles, no ice at all) were much higher than now and CO2 levels 10-12 times higher. The coccoliths deposited layer by layer, hundreds meter thick at last. That is one of the reasons why CO2 levels are much lower today, as much is stored in these layers and not directly available for the atmosphere and plants… See:
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/soes/staff/tt/eh/