As global warming spreads its tentacles, man starts to think of ways in which he can rein in this rising trend. For quite some time, geo-engineering was thought to provide some kind of relief from global warming, but a new study reveals that fertilizing the oceans with trains of plankton would suffice.
Global warming, the child of global green house emissions is set to become the mother of all evils. And as we come under the cloud of climate change, we tend to think about our safety measures. But, what can save us from global warming? It is the global carbon emissions that have put us at risk and in order to curtail surging mercury, we are not left with many options besides curbing our emissions, which seems unfeasible. But, whatever we can we should do.
All of us are familiar that oceans serve as carbon sinks. Because marine organisms desiccate extra carbon dioxide from the atmosphere keeping it clean. Planktons also known as wanderers thrive in upper layers of the ocean for light and nitrogen, to grow. Coming from the cold deep ocean, these nutrients play the most important part in the carbon cycle i.e. they fix carbon in sunlit surface waters through the process of photosynthesis through which it enters into their food web and used in respiration providing it energy. The remaining carbon sinks deep as biomass or detritus. This way the planktons keep the atmosphere free from carbon, thereby lessening the burden on the environment. The other role that planktons play is they release dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which helps in cloud formation. Once clouds form, the precipitation resulting will keep the atmosphere cool.
This sounds as a great idea, fertilizing oceans with planktons, which are also an important link in the marine food chain. But, alike geoengineering and cloud seeding, fertilizing planktons is no easy task and it hasn’t found favor among many a scientist. Because few reports of plankton deaths due to oceanic warming give the theory a set back.
However, the idea needs to be given a serious thought particularly when the ghost of global warming is warming the climate disastrously.
Via: Ocean Conserve
