Posted on 01/11/2016 10:42:43 AM PST by Citizen Zed
The biggest icebergs breaking off Antarctica unexpectedly help to slow global warming as they melt away into the chill Southern Ocean, scientists said Monday.
The rare Manhattan-sized icebergs, which may become more frequent in coming decades because of climate change, release a vast trail of iron and other nutrients that act as fertilizers for algae and other tiny plant-like organisms in the ocean.
These extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, a natural ally for human efforts to limit the pace of climate change blamed on manmade greenhouse gas emissions.
Ocean blooms in the wake of giant icebergs off Antarctica absorbed 10 to 40 million tons of carbon a year, the study estimated, roughly equivalent to annual man-made greenhouse gas emissions of countries such as Sweden or New Zealand.
Until now, the impact of ocean fertilization from the demise of giant icebergs, defined as floating chunks of ice longer than 10 nautical miles or almost the length of Manhattan, had been judged small and localized.
"We were very surprised to find that the impact can extend up to 1,000 kilometers,' (625 miles) from the icebergs, said Professor Grant Bigg of the University of Sheffield, an author of the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The scientists studied satellite images of 17 giant icebergs off Antarctica from 2003-2013 and found that algae could turn the water greener for hundreds of miles around the icebergs, with nutrients spread by winds and currents.
There are typically 30 giant icebergs floating off Antarctica at any one time - they can linger for years. The study said the giant icebergs had an outsized impact in promoting ocean fertilization when compared with small icebergs.
Bigg noted that global manmade greenhouse gas emissions had been growing at about 2 percent a year. "If the giant icebergs weren't there, it would be 2.1 to 2.2 percent," he said.
Ken Smith, an expert at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California who reviewed Monday's study, said in an email he found the new findings "convincing."
The Sheffield University scientists noted other estimates that the amount of ice breaking off Antarctica had gained by 5 percent in the past two decades and that it was likely to rise in the future with warming. That in turn could spur more ocean fertilization.
Wait... you mean the earth is a massive, self-regulating system?
Tell me it ain’t so!
Now they are making up stuff just to try to be funny.
Throw out truth and everything becomes believable.
Another day, another pack of excuses from the smart people.
We lived two miles from the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau for over 20 years. Until the park service nazis outlawed it, we would collect chunks of ice floating in the lake for use in our coolers. It’s pretty dense and lasts a long time.
The tortured excuses for AGW get more hilarious as time passes. Ted Danson has gotta be jumping around his rubber room trying to chew off the restraints as we type.
Yes, I remember seeing a NOVA TV Special about how those Leaping Carp migrated to the Southern Ocean and taught the "algae and other tiny plant-like organisms" to leap into the air to "extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow"!
Fascinating program! Of course, Discovery Channel had a program which claimed that the Leaping Carp reverse-evolved and BECAME the "algae and other tiny plant-like organisms".
/S
NB: Those "algae and other tiny plant-like organisms" are actually God's feedback mechanism to stabilize atmospheric CO2.
1) Higher atmospheric CO2 levels cause increased CO2 concentrations in the oceans.
2) Higher dissolved CO2 coupled with other nutrients cause increased diatom growth which sequesters CO2 in their shells. When these die, these shells sink to the ocean floor, eventually forming chalk and limestone.
3) Plate Tectonic/Seafloor Subduction take some of this down under the crust to be melted and eventually spit out back into the atmosphere by volcanoes. So far there is no conclusive scientific proof that "this is Bush's fault".
So nature protects nature.
I don’t get it. I thought man was in charge not God.
park service outlawing collecting ice for coolers
I remember a district forest ranger and myself being optimistic about the direction the USFS would go when Bush was first elected. The exact opposite happened.
I have a hope that a President Ted Cruz would straighten out the Parks BLM USFS EPA and all other alphabet agencies by applying the Constitution. Not so sure if Trump would.
icebergs breaking off and floating away are signs of ice growing... not receding...
Thanks for the totally implausible explanation, Al-Jazeera. Better stick to making excuses for terrorists.
How the heck can they STOP you from putting some floating ice in your cooler? Are they that heavily staffed?
More leftist retardation. The algae are consuming dissolved CO2 in the ocean. Not atmosphere. When they die they take that carbon to the ocean bottom. In return of consuming CO2 they liberate oxygen O2. Algae are good you idiots. And the ice on Antarctica is growing. Not shrinking according to NASA.
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