Researchers have found the two-year heatwave known as ‘the Blob’ may have temporarily dampened the Pacific’s ‘biological pump,’ which shuttles carbon from the surface ocean to the deep sea where it can be stored for millennia.
Researchers have found the two-year heatwave known as ‘the Blob’ may have temporarily dampened the Pacific’s ‘biological pump,’ which shuttles carbon from the surface ocean to the deep sea where it can be stored for millennia.
Canadian and European researchers, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, conducted a large-scale study of the impact of one of the largest marine heatwaves on record – colloquially known as the Blob – on Pacific Ocean microorganisms. Their observations suggest that it’s not just larger marine life that is affected by abrupt changes in sea temperature.
“Heatwaves such as the Blob may decrease the ocean’s biological role as a carbon sink for fixed atmospheric carbon,” said Dr. Steven Hallam (he/him), a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia and author of the paper published in Nature Communications Biology.
This ‘biological pump’ process is an important mechanism for buffering the impact of human activity on Earth’s climate, said co-author Dr. Colleen Kellogg (she/her), a research scientist with the Hakai Institute. “The ocean is a huge global reservoir for atmospheric carbon dioxide. If marine heatwaves reduce the capacity for carbon dioxide to be absorbed into the ocean, then this shrinks this reservoir and leaves more of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.”
Read more at University of British Columbia
Photo Credit: geralt via Pixabay
