http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/study-casts-doubt-on-iron-seeded-ocean-carbon-storage.html
>From the Alfred Wegener Institute A new study performed by a team of international scientists reveals that a complex ecosystem response to iron fertilization in the Southern Ocean might reduce the efficiency of biological carbon pump in transporting carbon dioxide into the deep ocean. Lead author Dr. Ian Salter from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhave, Germany, and a team of international collaborators, discovered that iron fertilization significantly promotes the growth of shelled organisms that feed on phytoplankton. These organisms produce carbon dioxide when building their calcareous shells. In a naturally iron-fertilized system in the Southern Ocean the growth and sinking of these shelled grazers reduces deep-ocean storage of carbon dioxide by up to 30 per cent. Ignoring the response of these organisms could result in an overestimate of the marine carbon dioxide storage capacity resulting from ocean iron fertilization, a potential strategy for the mitigation of climate change. The study is published by the scientific journal Nature Geoscience. The Southern Ocean plays an important role in the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the ocean. One aspect of this is the growth of phytoplankton, which acts as a natural sponge for carbon dioxide, drawing the troublesome greenhouse gas from the atmosphere into the sea. When these plankton die they can sink to the bottom of the ocean and store some of the carbon dioxide they have absorbed, a process scientists call the “biological carbon pump” .Although many areas of the Southern Ocean are rich in nutrients, they often lack iron, which limits phytoplankton growth. An important idea in oceanography is that adding iron to the Southern Ocean could stimulate phytoplankton growth and the biological carbon pump. Some scientists believe that this process can partly explain cycles in atmospheric carbon dioxide over Earth’s recent history and it has also been widely debated as a mitigation strategy for climate change.In two previous studies carried out in the last five years it has been shown that iron fertilization of the Southern Ocean can export carbon dioxide to the deep-sea. “However, to understand the net storage of carbon dioxide in the ocean interior, sinking phytoplankton are only one part of the story”, explains Dr. Ian Salter from the Alfred Wegener Institute. “These phytoplankton can be a food source for certain types of planktonic grazers, foraminifer and pteropods, that make shells from calcium carbonate - a process which produces carbon dioxide”. The biogeochemist, and an international team of collaborators, were the first to quantify production and sinking of these calcium carbonate shells resulting from a phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean, close to the Crozet Islands, with surprising results. Natural fertilization, caused by iron leached from the basaltic islands, increased the production and sinking of these calcium carbonate shells to a greater extent than sinking phytoplankton. This has important implications for the deep-sea storage of the carbon dioxide resulting from these blooms. “The production and sinking of these calcium carbonate shells affects the balance of carbon dioxide in the surface ocean over 100 to 1000 year timescales”, explains Dr. Ian Salter. “Our calculations suggest that this process reduces the amount of carbon dioxide transferred to the ocean interior via sinking phytoplankton by up to 30 per cent in this naturally fertilized system. However, it is unclear that purposefully added iron would have the same impact.”Interestingly the reduction in the efficiency of the biological carbon pump was not just caused by a higher abundance of these organisms, but also by changes in species composition. “In our samples from iron fertilized areas we found more species that produce larger calcium carbonate shells, and in turn produce more carbon dioxide per individual”, explains the biogeochemist. Iron fertilization can therefore affect biodiversity and ecosystem structure with important knock-on effects for climate interactions. “It is important to recognise that our findings are only from a specific area of the Southern Ocean. The ecology of these shelled organisms can be very different depending on the species and exactly where in the ocean they live”, cautions Dr. Ian Salter. In future research projects Dr. Ian Salter will continue to investigate the sinking of phytoplankton and shelled calcifying organisms in other naturally iron-fertilized areas of the Southern Ocean, in addition to the Arctic Ocean, where melting sea ice conditions may also affect this delicate balance. The production of organic carbon in the ocean’s surface and its subsequent downward export transfers carbon dioxide to the deep ocean. This CO2 drawdown is countered by the biological precipitation of carbonate, followed by sinking of particulate inorganic carbon, which is a source of carbon dioxide to the surface ocean, and hence the atmosphere over 100–1,000 year timescales. The net transfer of CO2 to the deep ocean is therefore dependent on the relative amount of organic and inorganic carbon in sinking particles. In the Southern Ocean, iron fertilization has been shown to increase the export of organic carbon3–5, but it is unclear to what degree this effect is compensated by the export of inorganic carbon. Here we assess the composition of sinking particles collected from sediment traps located in the Polar Frontal Zone of the Southern Ocean. We find that in high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll regions that are characterized by naturally high iron concentrations, fluxes of both organic and inorganic carbon are higher than in regions with no iron fertilization. However, the excess flux of inorganic carbon is greater than that of organic carbon. We estimate that the production and flux of carbonate in naturally iron-fertilized waters reduces the overall amount of CO2 transferred to the deep ocean by 6–32%, compared to 1–4% at the non-fertilized site. We suggest that an increased export of organic carbon, stimulated by iron availability in the glacial sub-Antarctic oceans, may have been accompanied by a strengthened carbonate counter pump. Carbonate counter pump stimulated by natural iron fertilization in the Polar Frontal Zone by Ian Salter, Ralf Schiebel, Patrizia Ziveri, Aurore Movellan, Richard Lampitt and George A.Wolff published in Nature Geoscience, 10 November 2014 DOI: 10.1038/NGEO2285 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
