From the University of East Anglia and the “has anyone told Al Gore?” department comes this finding that speaks to the huge complexity of Earth’s atmosphere and it’s systems.
Oceans emit sulfur and cool the climate more than previously thought.
Researchers have quantified for the first time the global emissions of a sulfur gas produced by marine life, revealing it cools the climate more than previously thought, especially over the Southern Ocean.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that the oceans not only capture and redistribute the sun’s heat, but produce gases that make particles with immediate climatic effects, for example through the brightening of clouds that reflect this heat.
It broadens the climatic impact of marine sulfur because it adds a new compound, methanethiol, that had previously gone unnoticed. Researchers only detected the gas recently, because it used to be notoriously hard to measure and earlier work focussed on warmer oceans, whereas the polar oceans are the emission hotspots.
The research was led by a team of scientists from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and the Blas Cabrera Institute of Physical Chemistry (IQF-CSIC) in Spain. They included Dr Charel Wohl, previously at ICM-CSIC and now at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK.
Their findings represent a major advance on one of the most groundbreaking theories proposed 40 years ago about the role of the ocean in regulating the Earth’s climate.
This suggested that microscopic plankton living on the surface of the seas produce sulfur in the form of a gas, dimethyl sulphide, that once in the atmosphere, oxidizes and forms small particles called aerosols.
Aerosols reflect part of the solar radiation back into space and therefore reduce the heat retained by the Earth. Their cooling effect is magnified when they become involved in making clouds, with an effect opposite to, but of the same magnitude as, that of the well-known warming greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide or methane.
The researchers argue that this new work improves our understanding of how the climate of the planet is regulated by adding a previously overlooked component and illustrates the crucial importance of sulfur aerosols. They also highlight the magnitude of the impact of human activity on the climate and that the planet will continue to warm if no action is taken.
Dr Wohl, of UEA’s Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences and one of the lead authors, said: “This is the climatic element with the greatest cooling capacity, but also the least understood. We knew methanethiol was coming out of the ocean, but we had no idea about how much and where. We also did not know it had such an impact on climate.
“Climate models have greatly overestimated the solar radiation actually reaching the Southern Ocean, largely because they are not capable of correctly simulating clouds. The work done here partially closes the longstanding knowledge gap between models and observations.”
With this discovery, scientists can now represent the climate more accurately in models that are used to make predictions of +1.5 ºC or +2 ºC warming, a huge contribution to policy making.
“Until now we thought that the oceans emitted sulfur into the atmosphere only in the form of dimethyl sulphide, a residue of plankton that is mainly responsible for the evocative smell of shellfish,” said Dr Martí Galí, a researcher at the ICM-CSIC and another of the main study authors.
Dr Wohl added: “Today, thanks to the evolution of measurement techniques, we know that plankton also emit methanethiol, and we have found a way to quantify, on a global scale, where, when and in what quantity this emission occurs.
“Knowing the emissions of this compound will help us to more accurately represent clouds over the Southern Ocean and calculate more realistically their cooling effect.”
The researchers gathered all the available measurements of methanethiol in seawater, added those they had made in the Southern Ocean and the Mediterranean coast, and statistically related them to seawater temperature, obtained from satellites.
This allowed them to conclude that, annually and on a global average, methanethiol increases known marine sulfur emissions by 25%.
“It may not seem like much, but methanethiol is more efficient at oxidising and forming aerosols than dimethyl sulfide and, therefore, its climate impact is magnified,” said co-lead Dr Julián Villamayor, a researcher at IQF-CSIC.
The team also incorporated the marine emissions of methanethiol into a state-of-the-art climate model to assess their effects on the planet’s radiation balance.
It showed the impacts are much more visible in the Southern Hemisphere, where there is more ocean and less human activity, and therefore the presence of sulfur from the burning of fossil fuels is lower.
The work was supported by funding from organisations including the European Research Council and Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
‘Marine emissions of methanethiol increase aerosol cooling in the Southern Ocean’, Charel Wohl, Julián Villamayor and Martí Galí et al, is published in Science Advances on November 27.
Journal – Science Advances.
The paper: 10.1126/sciadv.adq2465
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So… is this a good thing, or a bad thing?
I think it says:
“We thought we knew everything, and we put it in our models, but now we have discovered something else, so we were wrong; however, now that we DO know everything, we can update our models.”
There are known knowns.
These are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns.
That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know.
But there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Donald Rumsfeld
I did not know that.
(channeling the late great Johnny Carson)
I recall that Rumsfeld was pilloried by the media for his “word salad”. It was clear at the time that he was talking WAY over the journalists’ heads.
Maybe he should have employed a Venn diagram;-)
Yet the media is mum about Commie-la and her endless stream of word salads…
Great. I feel so much better now. I think.
“Oceans emit sulfur and cool the climate more than previously thought.”
So what?
The article makes no attempt to tell us the effect of this outgassing on the climate (now, or what was previously thought). Are there any data, or just a computer model? Is this not already included in satellite measurements for UAH?
If there are no measurements to support this theory, it is just speculation.
Maybe the linked published paper will provide the answers you seek so agitatedly, Grasshopper?
AFAICS, the only actual climate quantification in the paper is
“From the aforementioned estimate of the present-day DRE of MeSH, the IRE of MeSH-derived sulfate aerosols through aerosol-cloud interactions over the Southern Ocean in the summer, yet largely uncertain, can be estimated to be −0.3 to −1.5 W m−2 in January, based on the 4- to 20-fold proportionality between the IRE and DRE of sulfate aerosols over the Southern Ocean.”
It’s modelled, of course (you can’t measure this stuff directly) and pretty uncertain. Total net solar flux is about 240 W/m2 globally. But these MeSH numbers are peak for the effect, and apply only to the Southern ocean in January, so nothing like global.
“Nothing Like Global” How do you know? If it happens in the southern ocean in January how do you know it doesn’t happen in the northern ocean in July, you don’t.
Because they say so:
“The large anthropogenic contribution to the SO42− burden outside of the pristine Southern Ocean dwarfs the global mean MeSH-mediated DRE, which increases by 4% (−0.016 W m−2).”
Produced from models with very little actual SH data… YAWN !!
From the Paper
“We compiled surface seawater measurements of concurrently measured MeSH and DMS from all available cruises (see Materials and Methods), namely, AMT7 (temperate and tropical Atlantic, September to October 1998) (23), TRANSSIZ (Nordic Seas, May to June 2015) (24), and OC1607A and OC1708A (Northeast Pacific, July 2016 and August 2017). To these data, we added unpublished measurements from the POLAR-CHANGE cruise (Southern Ocean, February to March 2023) and year-round measurements from the Blanes Bay observatory (Mediterranean Sea, 2022).”
The reported MeSH are from measurements, not models
Measurements on a TINY transect.
Everything else is MODELS.
Read the report FFS !!
Did you miss the part where it says “Oceans … cool the climate more than previously thought.”
How do you size the attribution of human activity to the condition of the biosphere if you don’t know everything that is affecting the biosphere? That cloudy crystal ball that climate science uses *is* VERY cloudy indeed!
It’s essentially opaque.
More like the Magic 8-Ball; but the answer is always stuck on “climate change!”
If there are things going on in the biosphere that we don’t know even exist then it will affect the sizing of human contribution to the conditions in the biosphere. In other words, how do you size the attribution to CAGW because of human activity if you don’t know all the contributions from nature?
He won’t answer.
Sounds just like ‘climate science’ … settled as it is.
“If there are no measurements to support this theory, it is just speculation.”
From RG this is truly hilarious. ! 🙂 A bit of introspection required, dickie. !
1… Please provide empirical scientific evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2.
2… Please show the evidence of CO2 warming in the UAH atmospheric data.
3… Please state the exact amount of CO2 warming in the last 45 year, giving measured scientific evidence for your answer.
“If there are no measurements to support a conjecture, it is just speculation.”
So, according to “settled science” plankton, especially in the Southern Ocean, are endangered, and since they have been “discovered” to have an even greater cooling effect than thought, it means we are even more doomed than we thought. They keep “re-discovering” new, never-before noticed positive feedbacks just waiting to kick in. And when they do, boom, there goes the climate, spinning out of control. It’s that never-ending quest for the “spiral of death” for the climate. Which has never happened before. But man’s CO2 has magical properties you see.
It started with the debunked “runaway greenhouse effect.”
They keep swinging.
They keep missing.
Their cooling effect is magnified when they become involved in making clouds, with an effect opposite to, but of the same magnitude as, that of the well-known warming greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide or methane.
H2O still remains not a well known green house gas???
No, it’s not well-known, unfortunately. The Climate Scientology propaganda machine has dumbed down the vast majority of people because they don’t bother to find out stuff for themselves. Therefore 98% of greenhouse gases get ignored, as if they don’t exist, and the paltry 0.5% of greenhouse gases that we’ve added magically controls the climate according to said Climate Scientology.
The cooling effects of the hydrological cycle are completely and utterly ignored too, even though they are the real controls of the Climate.
It’s all very sad, but true.
The EMR radiative properties, absorption, transmission and reflection of both incoming and outgoing EMR of solid H2O is by far the most important factor. Gasses play a trivial role apart from the mass they add and water vapour being a source of ice.
You only need to walk outside on any day and you soon realise the significance of the ice in the atmosphere. It is the white stuff that can turn grey when there is a lot of it.mixed with condensing water. Early morning and late afternoons is can take on orange and red hues. Endless variety of cloys and shapes.
“They also highlight the magnitude of the impact of human activity on the climate and that the planet will continue to warm if no action is taken.”
How did they go from plankton to us? Am I to assume this is the phrase that got the study funded?
No need to assume Bob.
Without the obligatory “it wuz us hoomans wot dun it” tag, there’s no taxpayer $$$$$s available.
Dimethyl sulfide would be rapidly oxidized by ozone to dimethyl sulfoxide which is miscible with water and would not form aerosols. Rain and wave action would rapidly remove it from the air.
CH3SCH3 + O3 –> CH3SOCH3 + O2
Dimethyl sulfoxide could react with ozone to form dimethyl sulfone which is also miscible with water.
CH3SOCH3 + O3 –> CH3SO2CH3 + O2
I do not buy this aerosol proposal.
Harold,
As a chemist, I placed little trust in the proposed chemistry behind the ozone layer and the Montreal Protocol years ago.
Simply, not enough was known in translating laboratory chemistry to atmospheric chemistry, let alone over the remote South Pole. On present indications, the chemistry is not matching the observations.
Then, along comes this paper about methanethiol, its ability to seed clouds and some thoughts on cloud effects on climate, long known as one of the big uncertainties in climate modelling. There is the usual doublespeak where sometimes clouds cool the system, but sometimes warm. Overall, the paper is an adventure into the land of denied uncertainty. I did not bother to read it in detail because I have not worked with these lesser known sulphur gases recently.
There is a possibility that the paper fills a big hole in understanding and there is a possibility it involves insignificant factors. One can hope the chemistry is better than the Montreal stuff and that it does not lead to another Protocol in the line of green control proposals to stop what we have been doing, never mind the cost.
Geoff S
What they are saying is that reduced sulphur in the air will be oxidised, through whatever intermediates, to SO2, and then on to sulphate aerosols by a well studied mechanism. Seems hard to dispute.
If there was a “greenhouse effect” then this would be useful additional knowledge but it is just more BS to try to explain why the Earth does not conform to the climate models.
Ice in the atmosphere matters and water vapour matters. The rest just contributes mass.
If we look at land above 5,000m it will be covered in ice even in the tropics. That informs us just how hard it is to get ride of ice when the atmospheric pressure is less than 50hPa even in full sunligh – the limit of convective instability.
If the atmosphere was not able to develop convective instability then permanent cloud would form and gradually sink to the ground. So the process that creates convective instability is vital to avoid snowball earth. The same process also limits sustainable ocean surface temperature to 30C. That is what regulates Earth’s energy balance.
The “greenhouse effect” is BS for those lacking curiousity.
The oceans do not cool the atmosphere, they warm the atmosphere. You can tell that is so, because the ocean surface tends to be warmer than the atmosphere just above it. And the further up you get in the atmosphere, the cooler it gets. So this paper has at least one major thing backwards.
The warming effect of the oceans on the atmosphere is particularly strong in the Southern Ocean, because of the Antarctic katabatic winds. Very cold air from the higher atmosphere is drawn down over the Antarctic continent and ends up blowing out across the ocean. The Southern Ocean plays a major role in warming that air up again. So the major thing the paper has backwards is particularly strongly backwards in the region that the paper addresses.
Not very impressive!
Net Zero is a suicide pact
CO2 ppm is near its lowest level in 600 million years
CO2, 0.042% presence, a weak IR photon absorber, plays almost no role absorbing IR photons compared to water vapor, 1.7% presence near the surface (dew, fog, mist), a strong IR photon absorber, which absorbs much of IR surface photons via its many absorption windows.
Any IR photons not absorbed by WV, the vast majority, lose their energy by collision with hugely abundant air molecules.
Almost all IR surface photons are exterminated, about 10 meter from the surface.
.
WV, being light, 18, compared to air, 29, rises until about 2000 m, where cooler temperatures condense it into clouds. WV ppm is greatly reduced
CO2 does not play any meaningful role regarding IR photon absorption, until WV ppm is greatly reduced, which is above the clouds
Any higher altitudes IR photons are colder, have less energy, have longer wavelengths that mostly are beyond the CO2 15 micrometer absorption window.
Any such IR photons not absorbed by CO2, may:
.
1) lose their energy by collision with hugely abundant air molecules, which are spaced far apart, due to low density, or
2) travel towards outer space, or
3) travel towards earth.
.
In all instances, this IR photon activity above the clouds is of very small impact, compared to the surface IR photon activity, which, each day, evaporates and lifts huge quantities of WV to about 2000 m, especially in the tropics and sub-tropics.
.
The tropics and sub-tropics are the engine of world’s weather.
Any harm to rainforests, due to clearcutting, extinguishes flora and fauna
Clearcutting rain forests for ranching and crops decreases evaporation of rain forest water, and cause more sunlight on clearcut areas, both of which have contributed to increased world temperatures, likely more than CO2 ever will.
oh my goodness whale farts! So the turbine farms are killing whales, reducing emissions from whales and heating up the planet!
From the above article:
“This allowed them to conclude that, annually and on a global average, methanethiol increases known marine sulfur emissions by 25% . . .”
Unfortunately, nowhere in the article is this put into terms of ppmv such as used to express greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
However, if you dive into the subject paper discussed in the article (the Science Advances paper linked in bold red text 10.1126/sciadv.adq2465 ), you’ll eventually discover—revealed in Figure 2B (copy attached here)— that the new accounting for methanethiol (MeSH) amounts, at its peak, to only about 150 parts per trillion by volume in total marine sulfur emissions.
To put that into perspective, CO2 is currently at about 420 parts per million by volume in the atmosphere, a concentration about 3,000,000 times greater!
Bottom line: it’s an interesting finding having a basically insignificant effect on global cooling, even though “increases known marine sulfur emissions by 25%” sounds important.
Perhaps about 10 years ago there was a paper that reported finding, from satellite observations, some volatile compound produced by plankton. Production was significantly dependent on water temperature. When the water became warm enough, the rapid and large production of this substance resulted in much brighter clouds than otherwise existed. This rapidly reduced surface temperatures by reflecting more incoming sunlight. The paper said that, because of air pollution in the northern hemisphere they were only able to detect this substance and its effects in the Southern Ocean.
Yes, that was dimethyl sulphide. The paper covers that. It says that another substance, methanethiol, has similar and additional effects.
In almost infinitesimal amounts.
With absolutely ZERO evidence of any effect on anything . !
And absolutely totally natural, and no evidence of any actual change.
Article says:”… well-known warming greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide or methane.”
This article proves itself silly when they won’t mention water vapor.
The elephant in the room is the rate of cloud formation.
These guys are in the room, crawling around blindfolded, attempting to use their instruments to detect elephant body odor, since previous testing has shown the presence of elephant body odor in elephant stampede locations. But they won’t look up or remove their blindfolds…their paycheck depends on their “research”.
An interesting finding for sure. But if this was the product of real science then why turn around and throw it into failing climate models and then pretend the output those models means something in reality. It’s like trying to get a dead comedian to tell a funny joke.
And in the news, the settled science becomes further unsettled as new discoveries find some of the missing pieces.
Seems maybe we need to re-evaluate the acid rain scare and if, IF, it turns out to be a bogus as some think, get rid of the expensive low sulfur diesel.
That is, assuming the warming planet is a bad thing…
Assumptions are what kill models, so kindly consider the /sarc in this post.