Massive phytoplankton bloom solves missing carbon mystery
“This wasn’t just any phytoplankton bloom,” Stanford University marine scientist Kevin Arrigo told The Christian Science Monitor. “It was literally the most intense phytoplankton bloom I’ve ever seen in my 25 years of doing this type of research.”
The bloom was caused by the thinning of ice in the Arctic with the unexpected result that the ocean is absorbing far more CO2 than predicted. Global warming caused the ice melt but global warming also created the plankton bloom.
“… absorbing far more CO2 than predicted …” accelerates the acidification of the sea. These organisms are enjoying a perhaps once in ten million generations boon the coincidence of multiple variables in flux amid an already overly saturated environment acidic enough to be poison.
No, Bob, not yet. Thanks.