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Courtesy of N. Metzl
Scientists have found marine plankton in the Southern Ocean will increase production of a smelly gas in response to global climate change.
Parts of the global oceans may get smellier thanks to global warming, according to a recent study.
The culprit is increased production of a sulfur-containing compound by marine plankton called dimethyl sulfide, or DMS. The sea-air smell is described variably as like cabbage or fishy and tangy.
Its link to marine plankton has been known for a while, and in 2007 scientists identified the genes responsible for its production.
Climate scientists are interested in the smelly gas for more reasons than just tickling their inner child: it is a major precursor for aerosols that trigger cloud formation and reflect sunlight back to space.
The new study finds that "DMS is locally much more sensitive to climate change than in previous modeling studies," Philip Cameron-Smith, a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said in a news release.
"The shift in emissions will change the heating patterns."
To find out how the marine plankton and production of the gas will respond as concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide rise, scientists plugged present day values (355 parts per million) and a future value (970 parts per million) into a global ocean biogeochemical model.
In the future scenario, the team found that DMS emission to the atmosphere was 150 percent higher than current levels in the Southern Ocean. The plankton there benefit from melting sea ice and other ecosystem changes, which will open up cold water where they thrive.
The increased production of the plankton in the Southern Ocean, in particular a species called Phaeocystis, will compensate for a decline in production in warming waters that stunt growth, Cameron-Smith said.
Going forward, the researchers said that they may need to factor in how ocean acidification from increased levels of carbon dioxide in the oceans will affect the plankton community, and thus DMS production.
For a preview on this issue, check out the video below:
As higher amounts of carbon dioxide become absorbed by the oceans, some marine organisms are struggling to adjust. NBC's Anne Thompson reports for "Changing Planet," produced by NBC Learn in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
More on climate change and the oceans:
- Scientists figure out origins of sea smell
- Plankton, base of ocean food chain, in big decline
- Warming alters Antarctic food web, study finds
- Arctic ice melt sparks plankton blooms
- Scientists unravel recipe for ocean's biological blooms
Findings are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. In addition to Cameron-Smith, co-authors include Scott Elliot and Matthew Maltrud of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; David Erickson of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Oliver Wingenter of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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Earth: "Death to humans, death to Febreeze!"
Good thing sea temperatures in many areas are lower than average. What? You mean we aren't supposed to mention that? Notice the still cooler Pacific waters from La Nina.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/anomnight.current.gif
And then there is the inaccurate and downright deceptive term "ocean acidification". You can't use the word acid until the pH is below neutral which is 7.0. The oceans are at 8.1 which means they are base or alkaline. You can say they aren't as alkaline or that the base is weaker but you can't say acid. Calling it acidic is dishonest and a scare tactic.
And the most recent studies have shown that coral and clams and lots of other sea creatures actually benefit from more CO2 refuting the earlier doom and gloom scare tactic reports.
Considering that heating a liquid will cause it to evaporate and thus start a cooling cycle does not mean that it is not heating. Overall the ocean temperatures HAVE been increasing, no matter that there are localized areas that are showing a cyclic cooling, this is a FACT. Also, the FACT that the Ph HAS been going MORE acidic than it was IS acidification, meaning that the Ph HAS been dropping NOT that the ocean is acidic, but that the Ph IS changing TOWARDS acidic; basic chemistry ( have you ever done any titration?)! No matter HOW you want to try and spin it you are debunked. Using grammar to TRY to disprove scientific FACTS just shows how desperate you are to disprove SCIENTIFIC FACTS. You are entitled to your OPINION, but you are not entitled to make up your own facts.
economykiller.....
May we use you as proof there are some who still deny that our global climate is warming?
You see: most of those on your side have dropped back to the position that....ok, the climate is warming...but, human activity has nothing to do with it.
You are somewhat like those Japanese soldiers found on remote Pacific islands who did not know the war had been over (lost) for years. Maybe you could do some part-time work in a museum.
look to the sun
Your play on words is cute, almost comical, EK. However, and again, you don't tell the whole story. The Pacific Ocean covers a LARGE area of the planet. The La Nina anomaly effects primarily the tropical region of the pacific. There's a LOT of ocean out there other than the tropical region. What would you do/say if there was an El Nino anomaly occurring? I'd really be interested in seeing what you'd have to say about that. Instead of focusing on that one area try looking at the whole picture. It might, just might, help your argument.
Speaking of the whole picture, did you actually look at the image in your link? If you notice there are a LOT of yellows and reds in the higher latitudes. Especially in the southern hemisphere...where it's winter. You'd think that if the worlds oceans were really cooling you wouldn't see so much yellow and reds on the .gif image that YOU supplied, would you?
EK, the article you are commenting on is about global warming and climate change; by definition long-term events.
The pretty picture you link to has next to nothing to say about climate change. It is a snapshot from Thursday of this week. It tells us a lot about Thursday, and it is useful for weather prediction for several days.
Saying that your one-day snapshot image is predictive of climate change is like saying that since it was 66 degrees here (in Detroit) yesterday that the world is getting colder. (Or, last week, when it was 98 degrees, that the world is indeed getting warmer.)
That is weather, not climate, and I believe that you know the difference.
If, instead, you had linked to an image that showed temperature change in the ocean over a period of time, of at least a month, or better yet, of years, then you will have made a valid point. Perhaps a chart showing rising temps and melting ice, too?
It would seem that finding such a graphic of the dataset is very easy to find.
Was yours an honest error?
The earth has been cooling for ten years now. In recent news the sun spots on the sun have disappeared which has worried scientists. They think that the earth is headed towards a "maunder minimum" which means that the earth will receive less solar energy which heats the earth. Last week it was reported in the news that some 31,000 scientists signed a letter saying that they do not believe in global warming.
ROSS-3626718.....
It was reported by whom....ROSS-3626718 ?
Here's the truth:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-last-great-global-warming
BTW---smoking causes lung cancer.
According to NASA 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest years on record. The next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2009.
The Earth has NOT been cooling for the past 10 years.
The sunspot count today is 47, with three substantial spot groups - each group is LARGER THAN THE ENTIRE EARTH.
Daily sunspot count (counting back from yesterday) was 44 (with a beautiful sun-caused auroral show last night), 57, 43, 44 (with an Earth-directed C7-class solar flare), 47, 67, 65, 62, 48, 48, 16, 16, 37, 35, 46, 45, 58, 67 (with an M2-Class solar flare that missed the Earth, but did hit Venus and Mars), 74, 116, 122, 118, 107, and 132.
There has been only one day so far this year with a sunspot count of zero.
Sunspots have NOT disappeared.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/scrutinising-31000-scientists-in-the-oism-petition-project.html
That petition is a shell game. It's methods are, to be very polite, shaky.
All scientists are not created equal.
When I'm looking for medical advice I don't value the opinion of computer scientist to be as useful as that of a cardiologist.
The survey you reference accepted anyone with a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Doctorate of Philosophy in a field related to physical sciences to qualify. Even so, their 31,000 signatures is 0.3% of all scientists (using their very loose standard of what constitutes a "scientist".
Of the people who are actually working in the field of climate, 97.5% of climatologists agree with the statement, "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?"
If 97.5% of doctors told me that smoking was a very poor health choice, I'd pay attention.
The national science academies of 32 nations (including foremost in the world - the U.S. National Academy of Sciences), as well as The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Chemical Society, and the American Institute of Physics, and the American Geophysical Union, and The American Meteorological Society, and The Society of American Foresters (a favorite organization of mine), NASA, NOAA, and many many more INCLUDING THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION of PETROLEUM GEOLOGISTS, have all agreed and state publicly that climate change is real, it is largely human-caused, and we should do something about it.
I'm fond of another comment on the Newsvine by Bob Nelson:
ROSS: "Last week it was reported in the news that some 31,000 scientists signed a letter saying that they do not believe in global warming."
LOL. That was SEVERAL YEARS AGO, and it has been largely debunked. More recently, it was reported that over 95% of ACTUAL CLIMATE SCIENTISTS believe that human activity is significantly warming the climate.
We are warming the climate. Deal with it.
All these people that say the earth has been cooling never prove it. They never show the graphs.
Or if they DO show a graph it just shows the tiny slice of years that 'proves' their point without showing the rest of the years that actually show the entire trend!
Hey FM : If you plot 2001-2010 and do a linear regression you get constant temperatures, i.e.the warming has stopped all by itself. If you smooth the data with a 3-point filter, weighted 1-2-1..., to get rid of some of the year to year chatter in the data, the warmest year based on this smoothed data was 2005 and the smoothed values for 2006-2009 are all cooler and show a cooling trend.
One potential reason for "a cooling trend" (a phrase I'll get back to) is that for the past couple of years the Sun has been slooooowly climbing back from the deepest solar minimum we've had in a century.
As evidenced by the increase in sunspot activity, and the solar flares that we've seen cooking off the Sun this year, we're heading back to solar maximum in 2013/2014.
As the Sun comes back up it will add to the system.
We've been setting records even while the Sun has been sleepy - that's a great concern.
As for a cooling trend - 2005 and 2010 are in a statistical tie, while 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2009 are right behind. A case MIGHT be made for a plateau, perhaps, but I have difficulty in seeing a decline in that set.
I gotta run - more later.
Yes, but the short-term time scale you are talking about is more influenced by year-to-year climate anomalies than by the more long-acting factors of atmospheric chemistry. Plot a regresiion line for the last 40 years, and we are right on schedule for global warming.
Michael (Astronomy.FM)...it seems as if the American Astronomical Society disagrees with you. It appears we may be headed towards another Maunder Minimum that last happened 400 years ago.
(dot)sciencemag(dot)org/sciencenow/2011/06/end-of-the-sunspot-cycle(dot)html
Joe, the AAS does not have a position on the next solar cycle, nor does the AAS take positions on such matters.
In this matter the AAS as an organization does not agree, or disagree, with anybody. That's not what the AAS does.
My first area of research was solar physics (I moved into planetary astronomy when exoplanets were finally being discovered). I have wagered with a colleague that the next solar cycle (#25) will be at least as energetic as the current cycle (#24), as measured by the averaged daily sunspot count.
Further, while one group of solar physicists have published that they believe that cycle #25 will be subdued (an early paper that is already being challenged), ABSOLUTELY NO ONE IN SOLAR SCIENCE BELIEVES THAT WE MAY BE HEADED TOWARDS ANOTHER MAUNDER MINIMUM. We can barely predict what the Sun may do in a year or two; predicting it's level of activity beyond that is beyond our current skill set.
One group has published a paper. Other groups will examine their conclusions, test and challenge as appropriate, and perhaps after five or ten such research projects have been published we may be able to make such sweeping predictions. (Or not.) That is how science is advanced.
Of interest: this very same research team announced 7 years ago that the current cycle - #24 - would be "more energetic than the norm". Instead we've seen the deepest solar minimum in a century. Their one forecast to date was very wrong. Perhaps with their current methodology their prognostication has improved, but I've wagered otherwise.
As I have posted elsewhere on the Newsvine, I am the world's first solar cooling denier. I have bookmarked this page, and shall return in 11 years, at which time I shall say "I told you so", or I shall apologize for my profound ignorance and eat crow.
I see that this is your very first post on the Newsvine, joesmithX - welcome!
btw - I couldn't get your link to work (it was missing "news" at the start) - here is the web page you reference:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/end-of-the-sunspot-cycle.html
Yes, those 31,000 scientist are brought to you by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. You can read about their Oregon Petition which 31,000 signed here: http://www.oism.org/pproject/ and about their home schooling program which features the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and the1913 Noah Webster's Dictionary. http://www.oism.org/s32p28.htm Talk about reinforcing how far advanced they are in the science realm. And while their premiere publication on global warming says it's been peer reviewed, it's only be reviewed by a subsidiary publication put out by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. That's what I call the fox guarding the hen house. I'm sure he'll be fair to all.
Ah, 1913 - a very good year for dictionaries.
A little private research on the Petition Project (PP)....
I have an unusual last name - pretty rare (and no, I'm not going to share my last name on the Newsvine). I decided to search the 31,000 names for anyone with whom I share our unique surname - I found two gents, distant "cousins" no doubt.
I did a simple Google search for these two gents; with our unique surname, and with the PP providing their full first name and middle initial, I found only one Google hit for each name - jackpot! (It's pretty rare to only find one Google hit for a given name, but my surname is indeed distinctive.)
My "cousin" Gary R. works for an auto parts manufacturing plant in Detroit. They make wood veneers for BMW. He is listed by the EPA as the plant's compliance officer.
My "cousin" Richard E. owns a Camero, and he has a habit of drunk driving and with a suspended license (recently busted in Vermont; he is appealing the lower court judgment). He is a licensed builder in New Jersey; I found that his contractor's license expires in 2029.
I could find no scientific connection whatsoever about either of my two "cousins".
I certainly did not perform a detailed search on these two gents, so I can not say with any certainty that they are not researchers who are very knowledgeable about climate change. But, if they are, they are hiding it very well!
From what I've seen the PP does not appear to be a very reliable resource.
You may perform your own search here:
http://www.petitionproject.org/signers_by_last_name.php
Yes, quantity is a good thing. But when dealing with science, quality is even more important. It would appear that the PP is lacking in both.
"Little Ice Age conditions are sweeping across most of the northern hemisphere creating travel chaos, financial damage and, unfortunately, many deaths in the process. I predicted this back in July 2010 in my ” A Massive Winter Heading for the Northern Hemisphere?” article that has come home to roost. An excerpt “I predict the extra boost from my predicted solar grand minimum along with the current oceanic conditions the next northern winter will experience conditions similar to the Little Ice Age (1250-1850).”
The conditions are perfect at present for continued cold, the oceans are cold with the important atmospheric oscillations forcing cold arctic air further south than usual. The negative AO and NAO are producing blocking high pressure cells that bend the jet stream which allows the southern movement of arctic air. At present there is an unusual permanent high pressure cell over Greenland. I think this pattern should prevail over the next 20 to 30 years and replaces the positive pattern of the last 30 years. The global warming models have suggested that man-made CO2 will keep the AO and NAO in positive mode….how wrong have they been? "
landscheidt(dot)wordpress(dot)com
arxiv(dot)org/abs/1005(dot)4639
"The main thrust of his paper is the overwhelming references that point to a quasi-60 year cycle in the Earth’s climate system that correlates and lines up with the observed solar movements about the SSB (solar system barycentre). The same principles of the 4 outer gas giants as seen in my recently published paper are employed and there is a lot of symmetry between both areas of research. Nicola is prescribing an astronomical driver to our climate cycles and I am nominating the same solar system dynamics as a driver of solar output. The two can be mutually exclusive but look to mainly work in unison."
"
One of the main climate drivers is the PDO (Pacific decadeal oscillation) which aligns with solar velocity modulation, the other metric that Nicola shows is the solar distance from the SSB which moves in 20 year approx modulations but fluctuates higher when Uranus & Neptune are in conjunction (see top graph). The two oscillations combining to achieve the largest amplitude of modulation for over a hundred years that also corresponds to the large temperature increase between 1970 and 2000. The IPCC determines this as an AGW forcing but perhaps they have been riding a wave driven by celestial forces that is now crashing down around them? The celestial patterns have been coming off a high at around 2000 and are now well and truly on the decline phase, with the PDO also into its cool phase. Add to this the Landscheidt minimum and the stage is set for a reasonable period of cooling along with a platform to prove/disprove our theories."
There is a great deal which scientists still need to factor in, before they come to the conclusion that future shifts in ocean microbial life will automatically reverse destructive global climate change all by itself. Things like increased UV radiation which can sterilize the upper phototropic layer of our oceans, and an increased production of nitrous oxide (NO2) from oceanic dead zones, which has already been shown to climb to as much as 10,000 times the levels of NO2 in normal healthy oceans. Keep in mind that nitrous oxide has 310 times the global greenhouse effect of CO2, and can persist in our atmosphere almost as long as CO2. And last but not least, all carbon sinks on both land and sea eventually become carbon sources once their temperatures rise just 2.5 degrees C over present day (average) temperature levels.
According to data published at NASA's Earth Observatory website, which was collected and analyzed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City over the past several decades, the Earth’s average temperature rose by about 0.4°C for the period from 1880 to 1978, largely due to mankind's introduction of greenhouse gases. From 1978 to 2008 the Earth's average temperature continued to warm another 0.5°C. If this same warming trend continues to hold true in the future, the Earth's average temperature should go up by another 0.6°C by 2018, and another 0.7°C by 2021, and another 0.8°C by 2022, and another 3.0°C by 2023, etc. While it is quite likely that there will be other forces kicking in over this same time period to force a slow down in this exponential rate of global warming, the rate of global warming is still nevertheless likely to be extremely serious. Keeping in mind that it only takes a rise in the Earth's average temperature of 2.5°C to cause all carbon sinks on both land and sea to become carbon sources, you can readily see that our world could possibly reach the tipping point of no return in respect to runaway global warming as early as 2030. Please see NASA link below.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GISSTemperature/giss_temperature2.php