Algae and plankton emissions could offset global warming, finds EU project
An EU funded research project has discovered a new link between marine algae and climate change. Fifteen partners working on the 'Parforce' project found that iodine vapours, released from algae or plankton, condense over oceans to form aerosols. These aerosols can have a significant impact on climate change as well as on precipitation patterns. 'This new discovery represents a major breakthrough in the prediction of climate change, as no current prediction model takes this fact into account', said EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin, in response to the findings. Aerosols are extremely important for climate regulation as they make up the Earth's heat shield with the formation of haze and cloud layers. Whereas greenhouse gases trap heat escaping from the Earth's surface and cause global warming, aerosols block heat from reaching the Earth, and may therefore have a 'global cooling' effect. Marine aerosols formed over oceans are particularly important as oceans cover 70 per cent of the Earth's surface. The iodine vapour released from algae is in the form of methyl-iodine molecules, which react with sunlight and ozone to produce iodine oxide aerosol particles. Scientists believe that changes in ocean temperatures have led to increased oceanic biological activity, thus resulting in higher levels of iodine vapour emissions and therefore more aerosol particles than was previously the case. Increasing the availability of aerosols will increase the solar blocking efficiency of the haze and cloud layers, bringing about a global cooling effect that could partially offset global warming from greenhouse gases. Clouds could also remain in the sky for longer as an increase in the abundance of aerosols will reduce precipitation, contributing further to solar blocking. Initial research has been conducted on the Irish Atlantic coast. The next step is to investigate whether this transformation is occurring on a larger scale over other oceans.