No specifics here, juts a lot of predictive maybes.
Small organisms could dramatically impact world’s climate
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Warmer oceans in the future could significantly alter populations of phytoplankton, tiny organisms that could have a major impact on climate change.
In the current issue of Science Express, Michigan State University researchers show that by the end of the 21st century, warmer oceans will cause populations of these marine microorganisms to thrive near the poles and may shrink in equatorial waters. Since phytoplankton play a key role in the food chain and the world’s cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and other elements, a drastic drop could have measurable consequences.
“In the tropical oceans, we are predicting a 40 percent drop in potential diversity,” said Mridul Thomas, MSU graduate student and one of the co-authors. “If the oceans continue to warm as predicted, there will be a sharp decline in the diversity of phytoplankton in tropical waters and a poleward shift in species’ thermal niches, if they don’t adapt to climate change.”
Thomas co-authored the study with fellow MSU graduate student Colin Kremer, plant biology, and their faculty mentors Elena Litchman, MSU zoologist, and Christopher Klausmeier, MSU plant biologist. The team, which conducted its research at MSU’s Kellogg Biological Station, explained that since phytoplankton play a key role in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and thus, global climate, this shift could cause significant change.
The microorganisms use light, carbon dioxide and nutrients to grow. Although phytoplankton are small, they flourish in every ocean, consuming as much carbon dioxide through photosynthesis as all the terrestrial plants combined.
Water temperatures strongly influence their growth rates. In fact, phytoplankton in warmer equatorial waters can grow much faster than their cold-water cousins. With worldwide temperatures predicted to increase over the next century, it’s important to gauge phytoplankton’s reaction and what will happen to the carbon that they currently carry to the ocean floor.
The researchers were able to show that phytoplankton have adapted to local current temperatures. Based on projections of ocean temperatures in the future, however, many phytoplankton may not adapt quickly enough to changes in their current environment. Since phytoplankton can’t regulate their temperatures or migrate, they may suffer significantly limited growth and diversity, Kremer said.
Being able to forecast the impact of these changes will be a useful tool for scientists around the world, said David Garrison, program director in the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences.
“This is an important contribution to predicting plankton productivity and community structure in the oceans of the future,” he said. “The work addresses how phytoplankton species are affected by a changing environment, and the really difficult question of whether evolutionary adaptation to those changes is possible.”
This research is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and MSU’s BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action.
###
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, well, well… who would’ve anticipated this: “It’s worse than we thought!”
First, the cited ‘reduction in diversity’ is a red herring, unless it is accompanied by a reduction in biomass and/or growth rate; it’s only Politically-Correct humans who see ‘diversity’ as an end in its own right. Second, my understanding is that phytoplankton grows in the top layers of the ocean, where annual (and even diurnal) changes in water temperature are much larger than those posited to be driven by ‘global-warming’ – I wonder how the phytoplankton can survive that fluctuation, or the termperature impacts of ENSO, etc?
No mention whatsoever of how they conducted this research? Did they just plunk down the phytoplankton in hotter water? I mean, it isn’t as if climate is going to raise temperatures how many degrees in just one day, so how’d they simulate the gradual increase in temperature? Or perhaps it’s just models all the way down?
Looks like a lot of hypothetical speculation….may….may…may…
Looks life another example of negative feedback !
“The microorganisms use light, carbon dioxide and nutrients to grow. Although phytoplankton are small, they flourish in every ocean, consuming as much carbon dioxide through photosynthesis as all the terrestrial plans combined.”
Light energy removed and stored.
Carbon Dioxide removed
Whats not to like !
Except the oceans are not going to warm. They are going to cool, causing increased ocean productivity (the one benefit to the biosphere of global cooling).
But we’re told the models predict the poles will warm much more than the equator.
Global thermal enrichment, and enhanced CO2 will therefore result in vast increases in phytoplankton, and accordingly much greater carbon capture.
This is one of the negative feedbacks that leave me unimpressed with the claims of thermageddon.
They are asking for funding for long term job security based on what we don’t know.
“… many phytoplankton may not adapt quickly enough to changes in their current environment.”
Are they talking about elephants? With generation times ranging from a few days to a few hours, they will adapt to anything. They will go anaerobic again if they have to.
http://www.marine.csiro.au/microalgae/methods/Growth%20rate.htm
(note the paragraph under “Declining growth”)
It was already known that phytoplankton numbers have dropped by 40% between 1950 and 2010.
It is supected that this decline which is directly attributable to warming oceans may be a significant factor in the drastic decline in large fish seen over the last few decades as catches plummet. Overfishing may not be the only reason fish like cod have vanished from the Grand banks.
This is an example of the effect of AGW impacting on human food sources already because of the existing warming of the oceans. No mistake about ocean warming, there are no UHI to distort the readings out there. Decreasing ph just makes things worse as many phytoplankton use forms of calcite as ridgid skeletons which become increasingly energy intensive to form as the waters warm and become less basic.
Number of species == Number of Organisms ??? FAIL! More brainwashed children pretending to be scientists writing papers to support an agenda that they don’t understand. Notice how a majority of these propaganda sold as science pieces are authored by students?
izen:
At October 30, 2012 at 8:55 am you say
40%? That is “known”? Really? How?
Richard
@- Alec Rawls
“Except the oceans are not going to warm. They are going to cool”
It is an interesting assertion… but do you have any credible evidence to support it ?
the most recent figures for ocean heat content show it continuing to accumulate energy. There are not any imminent reductions in solar output or albedo that would be of sufficient magnitude to offset the additional W/m2 from the rising CO2 so I wonder what physical process you envisage causing the cooling ?
@Izen
Do you have even the slightest data to back your outrageous claim that the absence of phytoplankton contributed to the decline of the cod population? I will give you the benefit of doubt with a window of opportunity to overturn the prevailing consensus that it was overfishing with the use of sonar.
If you are correct, how do you explain the unexpectedly rapid recovery of the cod population when fishing them was banned?
My hand hovers over the BS button.
izen wrote, “phytoplankton numbers have dropped by 40% between 1950 and 2010.”
Izen, that’s debunked nonsense. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/25/the-ocean-wins-again/
May, might, could.
Definitely another global warming study.
@- richardscourtney says:
“40%? That is “known”? Really? How?”
By observation using a Secchi disk.
izen says:
October 30, 2012 at 8:55 am
—-
Small problem, the oceans aren’t warming.
PS: Where’s your evidence of a decline in phytoplankton?
“If the oceans continue to warm as predicted…..”
OK , I’ve read enough of this bullshit science. They don’t say predicted by who, on what basis, they just take it as given.
Errors were reasonably made in the 1990’s but continuing to spew out this garbage as if predictions of broken climate models still has any relevance to science is intellectually dishonest.
ENOUGH .
izen:
re your reply to me at October 30, 2012 at 9:25 am
You say you determined phytoplankton decline “By observation using a Secchi disk”.
I fail to understand how the stated device could conduct the required measurements.
Please explain your method and your sampling over the entire oceans of the world and the sampling times over the period since 1940.
Frankly, I consider your claims to have no more validity than your usual comments on WUWT.
Richard
Richard,
I questioned that 40% global decline and Googled “global phytoplankton decline” and found were it came from. The study used turbity measurements as a proxie and modeled those measurements globally and came up with an approximate one percent decline per year over the period covered by the measurements. The 40% was what they figured to be the decline since about 1950. They say the figures are statistically significant but do not give any probability figures or confidence limits. Their plot of where the measurements were taken and the magnitude of calculated increases and declines shows that there were no measurements in the Arctic Ocean and very few measurements in the mid latitudes of the southern oceans. I question both their construction of a global model and their statistical methods of analyzing the resulting “data”. This appears to me to be just another subjective study to provide evidence that CAGW is a real problem.
Izen, please do us a favour.
Take one litre of seawater, sterilise it and sparge it with air balanced to 10,000 ppm CO2. Do it as long as you please (I predict you’ll need a couple hours to achieve equilibrium). Tell us how far your pH will go.
This is simply press release baffle gab. The whole thing is little more then speculation based on a bunch of assumptions that are only loosely related to real biological and temperature interactive systems.
Some of these phytoplankton complete their life cycle in one week. I would think that, even with genetic plasiticity aside, their gene pool would be capable of rapid shifts – just like fruit flys.
The phytoplankton dimethylsulfate negative feedback mechanism does not get much attention here, and is of course ignored by the warmists. The Idso group at co2science has a page that summarizes the DMS effect and shows that it could offset most or all of the postulated human effect. See:
http://www.co2science.org/subject/d/summaries/dms.php
The concluding paragraph from the Idso summary reads:
“In conclusion, it is unfortunate that in light of the overwhelming empirical evidence for both land- and ocean-based DMS-driven negative feedbacks to global warming, the effects of these processes are only now beginning to be incorporated into today’s state-of-the-art climate models. And when such effects are properly considered, it may be that these biologically-driven phenomena may prove to totally compensate for the warming influence of all greenhouse gas emissions experienced to date, as well as all those that are anticipated to occur in the future.”
This factor deserves much greater emphasis, and should be included in any general public presentation. Biology rules!
izen says:
October 30, 2012 at 8:55 am
It was already known that phytoplankton numbers have dropped by 40% between 1950 and 2010.
###
BZZT! Wrong answer…
It isn’t even a drop in diversity, but “potential diversity.”
That’s true, as far as it goes, only because they simply don’t know what the diversity is. In terms of complexity, understanding the ‘ocean-genome’ is indeed ‘worse than they thought’. To paraphrase Beavis and Butthead: “Errrrrrrr………This is hard.”