From the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK)
Ocean nutrients a key component of future change say scientists
Variations in nutrient availability in the world’s oceans could be a vital component of future environmental change, according to a multi-author review paper involving the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).
The paper, published this month in Nature Geoscience, reviews what we know about ocean nutrient patterns and interactions, and how they might be influenced by future climate change and other man-made factors. The authors also highlight how nutrient cycles influence climate by fuelling biological production, hence keeping carbon dioxide (CO2) locked down in the ocean away from the atmosphere.
Dr Mark Moore from University of Southampton Ocean and Earth Science, which is based at NOCS, led the review. He said: “We aimed to get a group of international experts together in an attempt to define the current state of knowledge in this rapidly developing field.”
Marine algae, which support most marine ecosystems, need certain resources to grow and reproduce – including nutrients. If there are not enough nutrients available, the growth or abundance of these microscopic plants can become restricted. This is known as ‘nutrient limitation’.
“All organisms, from the smallest microbes, up to complex multi-cellular animals like us, require a variety of chemical elements to survive,” explained Dr Moore. “Somehow we all have to get these elements from our external environment.”
Nutrients are therefore a key driver of microbial activity in the oceans. But at the same time, microorganisms play a major role in cycling nutrients and carbon throughout the vast ocean system – including drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere. Therefore understanding ocean nutrient cycling is important for predicting future environmental change.
Dr Moore said: “Despite many decades of research, we still don’t understand some of the complex interactions between marine microorganisms and nutrient cycles.
“Human activity has the potential to profoundly impact oceanic nutrient cycles. A solid understanding of complex feedbacks in the system will be required if we are going to be able to predict the consequences of these changes.”
The authors – from 22 different institutes – call for an interdisciplinary approach merging new analytical techniques, observations and models going forward to address current gaps in our understanding.
The review resulted from a workshop, hosted at NOCS, as part of the International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme/Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (IGBP-SCOR) funded Fast Track Initiative on Upper Ocean Nutrient Limitation.
ALL CHANGE, Climate is now 4 years of weather
The Sun UK Newspaper
“BRITAIN’S winters are getting colder because of melting Arctic ice, the Government’s forecaster said yesterday.
“Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo said climate change was “loading the dice” towards freezing, drier weather — and called publicly for the first time for an urgent investigation.”
Prof Slingo said: “If you look at the way our weather patterns have behaved over the past four or five years, we’re beginning to think that there is something happening. “
“Human activity has the potential to profoundly impact oceanic nutrient cycles.”
Yes indeed. Especially the appalling fishing practice as imposed by the EU, throw away fish you are not licenced to land. Then there is seabed hoovering to produce fish meal for fish farms with a return of 1lb farmed fish for 8lb fish meal. No wonder the ocean food chain is in distress.
“Marine algae, which support most marine ecosystems, need certain resources to grow and reproduce – including nutrients. If there are not enough nutrients available, the growth or abundance of these microscopic plants can become restricted. This is known as ‘nutrient limitation’.”
This is the principle underlying the ‘Malthusian’ AGW agenda,…
“Human activity has the potential to profoundly impact oceanic nutrient cycles. A solid understanding of complex feedbacks in the system will be required if we are going to be able to predict the consequences of these changes.”
In other words, “Send Money!”
The most needed nutrient for marine algae is CO2. Mineral nutrients are sourced in the ocean depths, upwelling sea water contains more than surface waters.
This report is from a University that added hydrochloric acid to its sea water tanks because they couldn’t get the bubbled CO2 to dissolve sea shells so any reported research from them I view with disbelief.
Slightly ot but sort of relevant, there was an interesting programme on BBC4 on Tuesday about the science of bubbles. It covered lots of things from the taste of champagne through medicine to reducing friction for ships. The presenter was Helen Czerski from Southampton university, whose area of speciality is bubbles in the ocean including their effect on climate. I waited for the worse than we thought moment, but it never came. Is the climate climate changing?
Slingo is looking for a new super computer to make more failed model predictions.
“We aimed to get a group of international experts together in an attempt to define the current state of knowledge in this rapidly developing field.”- so they don’t know much but will this stop them from doing a ‘worse than we thought’ paper in Nature Geoscience.
Re nutrients, Na, Mg, K, Ca, Fe, C, N, O, P, S plus trace metals – these are all super abundant in the ocean and on land. Any other questions? Perhaps I could give a paper on the likelihood of their depletion.
“The paper, published this month in Nature Geoscience, reviews what we know about ocean nutrient patterns and interactions, and how they might be influenced by future climate change and other man-made factors.”
That sentence implies that future climate change is man-made. So it seems that these “scientists” have a fundamental misunderstanding about nature. Start with wrong assumptions, how likely is it that you arrive at correct conclusions, well, and if you do, it would be despite your misconceptions, not because of them.
22 different institutes all hitching a ride on the climate gravy train.
Check the P-V-T charts for CO2….at 4C and 150 atmospheres, CO2 is a liquid. Per Timothy Casey in”Volcanic CO2″….there are vast pools of liquid CO2 on the ocean floor….posted at Geologist-1011. This supply assures that the entire ocean is at maximum saturation, regardless of a 10 – 20 PPM human caused atmospheric change. The net system flow is dissolved ocean CO2 outgassed to the atmosphere….and CO2 is the basis for ALL CARBON LIFE FORMS….including politicians and environmentalists. [although it is entertaining to think about starving THEIR nutrient supply….which is monopoly money]
This is excellent research and its scientific goal is well stated; just one example of how ‘climate change’related research may generate ‘real’ science.Sceptics/IIPCcritics ioften ignore this and concentrate on the misuse of science by interested parties, so-called users who usually have a financial or power related interest in one interpreation of the science.
Hasn’t slygo talked to the people of the met office who understand the science? I don’t meean the policy oiks, just the scientists.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/met-offices-private-briefing-document-for-the-environment-agency/
Friends:
I draw attention to the post by Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen at April 11, 2013 at 5:25 am.
If she says that then consider the issue carefully before commenting.
Sonja produced the best paper by far on the 1980s ‘acid rain’ issue. It is better than both of my papers on that subject.
If you choose to question her on her post then be prepared for robust debate from this extraordinary lady who – when AGW is long-forgotten – will be remembered as a hero of science.
As Editor of E&E she has published both pro and anti AGW scientific papers. She published the first papers from McIthrick and McIntyre which broke the MBH Hockey Stick.
The Climategate emails reveal how ‘The Team’ attempted to muzzle Sonja by attempting to get her sacked from her university position.
So, answer her how you want. But be aware of the lady we are honoured to have here with us.
Richard
They admit that they don’t know what they are doing by announcing that they need to assemble a team of experts to study a potential problem. I think all that biosphere will consume all the CO2 that is delivered to it and the atmosphere is a very good delivery system. Think about the upwelling off the coast of Peru emitting CO2 that ends up in the Arctic to feed phytoplankton blumes.
Well said, Richard.
We have quite enough enemies and few enough friends.
It is also of interest that Earth has two open-cycle refrigeration systems. In a closed system heat is moved by opposite actions, separated by piping and coils. Freon is heated [and boiled] in an evaporator, cooling the environment outside the evaporator coil. The Freon is pumped to a condenser where it is cooled [giving off heat] and condenses back to liquid….but the surrounding air is heated. A heat pump reverses this refrigerant flow, removing some heat from the cold outdoors and condensing that heat in the usual inside evaporator coil.
Now imagine the same process with NO piping. The ocean surface is cooled by evaporation [largely water] and the heat carried aloft where it condenses, releasing heat, which falls as cool rain. The refrigerant [in this case water] still has the opposite action of the environment, but without the easily visible process. This same atmospheric process also occurs in the ocean in a liquid state. Multiple gases are discharged under high heat and high pressure at sea floor vents and instantly condense [cooling the ocean floor]. These gases [now liquid] disperse in the water column, reaching maximum saturation and outgassing [evaporating] at various levels and again removing heat from the ocean. These gases include CO2, NOx, SOx, CH4 and others, and again checking the P-V-T charts, all have different phase change points.
These entrained gases can also separated by mechanical action, which is why deep sea robots and submarines must have very slow moving propellers to avoid the ‘cavitation’ that produces bubble tracts. The result is that a portion of Earth’s elemental heat production is hidden as open cycle refrigeration as described in “Earth’s Missing Geothermal Flux”. This also explains the needed feedstock for the 3 micron SOx in the atmosphere that is then nucleacized by solar radiation into into the 50 micron size needed for cloud formation. Many mysteries are hidden in plain view. We don’t know who discovered water….but we are pretty sure it wasn’t the fish.
[suggestion: take a look at the world outside the elitist limited intellectual fishbowl]
Dust from extreme dry cold conditions, and silt from catastrophic wet floods replenishes algae-growing areas in the ocean. That stuff is filled with exactly the nutrients needed to create the blooms that later become food for the cyclic nature of fish population counts. Extremes are a necessary and natural part of oceanic nutrients. Stable “climate” with predicatable weather, which most unschooled people think the ideal, is the real catastrophy.
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen says:
April 11, 2013 at 5:25 am
“This is excellent research and its scientific goal is well stated; just one example of how ‘climate change’related research may generate ‘real’ science.”
So you’re saying they were only lying when claiming that future climate change is an exclusively man made phenomenon; to be able to steal some warmist money.
Makes me feel better already.
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen says
quote
This is excellent research and its scientific goal is well stated; just one example of how ‘climate change’related research may generate ‘real’ science.
unquote
Dr Boehmer-Christiansen,
I’ve been waiting for years for someone to examine the effects of ocean biology on the carbon isotope signal. A naive expectation is that dissolved silica run-off from agriculture and industry would increase diatom growth. This should restrict the growth of calcareous phytoplankton until the silica is used, delaying the spring bloom, reducing ultimate CO2 pulldown and, as diatoms use a non-discriminatory carbon fixing system, the comparative amount of light C left in the atmosphere will go up. So more CO2 in the atmosphere, light C signal. Sounds familiar.
I can’t wait.
JF
Or not, of course. But at least someone is looking.
Nutrients are not a control knob determining the productive state of the oceans. And while Dr. Moore’s comment that “Despite many decades of research, we still don’t understand some of the complex interactions between marine microorganisms and nutrient cycles” is correct it is not sufficent. We also do not understand the interaction of entire the grazer spectrum including the vertebrates on productivity. Nor do we understand the complex interactions of tide, current, flushing times, sediment interactions, temperature, light penetration, allelopathy, ocean phase etc.
EPA is currently pushing nutrients as the control knob controlling ocean and estuary production for a very simple reason– it can’t regulate any of the other parameters.
While researching nutrient cycles in the vast oceans is no doubt a worthy project, it does seem that once again scientists are imagining that we puny humans could fix everything just the way we like it if only we could find the right settings for the machine (which they presume that we control).
It is certainly true that human activity can have significant effects on small areas of the sea near coastlines. As for the other 99% – these people either have delusions of grandeur or have been playing too many computer games.
Understanding of the oceans is even more primitive than understanding land systems. On land, we have the advantage that there is much less of it and we live there, but we are still arguing about many fundamental issues.
A touch of humility and a good dose of reality are required here.
As I read the post, at first I was expecting another puff piece. At the end, I saw that there were 22 authors. That usually means a low quality article ( using Willis’s index of authors to quality )
The post looks like a press release. However, it makes sense. It sumarises the state of current research and the huge hole in our knowledge. As such it looks like a reasonable piece of research.
I noted the comment of Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen and it had the ring of truth, at least for me. I then saw Richard Courtney’s comment. And it put Sonja’s comment in perspective.
As a sceptic / sometime Luke-warmer I am sometimes disappointed by people on our side of the argument who take a religious position. Something we criticise the Alarmists for.
Not just alarmists, but real scientists have to get funding, and global warming is a good source. We should not be critical just because they appeal for funding.
/ikh
johanna says: April 11, 2013 at 6:00 pm
quote
While researching nutrient cycles in the vast oceans is no doubt a worthy project, it does seem that once again scientists are imagining that we puny humans could fix everything just the way we like it if only we could find the right settings for the machine (which they presume that we control).
unquote
On March 12 last year we flew to Madeira from the UK: from 40,000 ft the ocean looked odd. First, large tendrils of different texture wavered over the surface, with no waves in the smooth bits but whitecaps showing in the unsmoothed. Then the tendrils joined and a vast smooth area of ocean was all that I could see from horizon to horizon. We flew over this smooth for forty minutes. i estimate its area as between 20,000 and 30,000 square miles. The smooth was resisting what looked like a force 4 wind.
So what was it? It ran from abeam Oporto to shortly before our destination where it faded into tendrils and then disappeared. I think it was pollution. Above it the clouds had disappeared and the smoothed surface must have been warmed by a sun which was not reflected by the stratocu — a difference in albedo of approximately zero and seventy.
I was for a while an RAF pilot and the nastiest job I ever had was maritime strike attack, 100 ft over the sea at 480 knots, so I’ve got an intimate idea what the sea looks like. The only time I’ve seen the smooth effect was when the surface was oil and/or surfactant polluted. Until I saw that smooth I would have agreed with you: our oil spills (a city of 5 million people spills enough oil pollution each year to equal a major tanker disaster – NASA, from memory) should really be oxidised before they got that far from shore. We spill enough light oil down our rivers to coat the entire ocean surface every four weeks (it’s actually something like four weeks and eight hours, a calculation I did for rgb@duke when he objected), and assuming that surfactant is about the same we can expect a smoothed ocean every fortnight. Then one must allow for biodegradation, oxidation etc, so it won’t be anywhere near that much, but in principle that’s what is happening. Some areas get more than their share — every two weeks enough light oil comes down the rivers of Siberia to equal an Exxon Valdez disaster.
So, johanna, while I’d agree with you that we can’t find a control knob, I think we could usefully clean up our effluent which may extend for thousands of miles, not just near the coasts, which would be the equivalent of stopping hitting the weather machine with a large rock. If oil spills are really reducing cloud cover then climate sensitivity to CO2 is much less than 2 and all the windmills and expense are for nothing.
Aeolian dust, that’s worth measuring too.
See my posting at Judith Curry’s site: GLOBAL WARMING IN THE 20TH CENTURY: AN ALTERNATIVE SCENARIO
JF
http://marinas.com/view/inlet/1668_Beaufort_Harbor_Inlet_NC_United_States , the first two images show a nice area of smooths.
On March 12 last year we flew to Madeira from the UK: from 40,000 ft the ocean looked odd. First, large tendrils of different texture wavered over the surface, with no waves in the smooth bits but whitecaps showing in the unsmoothed. Then the tendrils joined and a vast smooth area of ocean was all that I could see from horizon to horizon. We flew over this smooth for forty minutes. i estimate its area as between 20,000 and 30,000 square miles. The smooth was resisting what looked like a force 4 wind.
So what was it? It ran from abeam Oporto to shortly before our destination where it faded into tendrils and then disappeared. I think it was pollution. Above it the clouds had disappeared and the smoothed surface must have been warmed by a sun which was not reflected by the stratocu — a difference in albedo of approximately zero and seventy.
——————————————————–
What you describe proves nothing, except to highlight my point that we know very little about the oceans. “I think it was pollution” is a bit like saying “I think it’s the CO2 that’s doing it”.
On the face of it, 20-30,000 square miles of otherwise undetected “pollution” in the middle of the sea is implausible.
I would want to hear rgb@duke’s version of the exchange before going any further on your point about oil pouring down rivers and its effects.
The London Dumping Convention adopted a non-binding resolution in 2008 on fertilization (labeled LC-LP.1(2008)). The resolution states that ocean fertilization activities, other than legitimate scientific research, “should be considered as contrary to the aims of the Convention and Protocol and do not currently qualify for any exemption from the definition of dumping.”