Scientists
checking the mesocosms off the coast of Svalbard (Credit: Ulf Riebesell/GEOMAR)
(click on photo to enlarge)
As the climate changes and oceans’ acidity increases, tiny
plankton seem set to succeed. An international team of marine scientists has
found that the smallest plankton groups thrive under elevated carbon dioxide
(CO2) levels. This could cause an imbalance in the food web as well as decrease
ocean CO2 uptake, an important regulator of global climate. The results of the
study, conducted off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, in 2010, are now compiled
in a special issue published in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European
Geosciences Union.
“If the tiny plankton blooms, it consumes the nutrients that
are normally also available to larger plankton species,” explains Ulf
Riebesell, a professor of biological oceanography at the GEOMAR Helmholtz
Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany and head of the experimental team.
This could mean the larger plankton run short of food.