The Planktos Blog

This is the blog for The Planktos www.planktos.com. We work to develop solutions to help the worlds oceans endure and recover from the ravages of global climate change.

This blog is open for comments by readers. Welcome all well mannered and intentioned commentary.

Below is a brief essay that describes in part what we do.


Oceans in Peril from Rising Atmospheric CO2
(April 2004 The Planktos Foundation)

The global community worries about global warming or more rightly global climate change. What we have not recognized is that "global warming" is likely the last and least effect that we will experience as part of global climate change. Today, a hundred years before the predicted few degrees of warming becomes palpable vast changes to the Earth's ecosystems will have wrought monumental changes in the way we humans live and behave on and with this small blue planet. Unlike Global Warming these changes are not some debatable future scenario they are upon us today. The most significant changes we see today are in the world’s oceans. The ocean environment is in real peril now. Why is this?

The cause of this change and warming is known to be greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, that are accumulating in our atmosphere as a result of the burning of fossil fuel. We know for certain that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen, since the dawn of the fossil fueled industrial age 150 years ago, from roughly 250ppm to 380ppm. We can predict and project the continued rise of CO2 to levels in the very near future beyond 500ppm and reaching even beyond 1000ppm over the next century or two.

The first and most dramatic effects of 150 years of rising CO2 are seen in eco-systems that are part of and responsive to powerful feedback systems. Delicately balanced eco-systems respond to the slightest shift that we apply with tremendous leverage. The first evidence of such a feedback eco-system couple is seen in the desert - ocean system. It is a remarkable part of the natural balance of our planet that the wettest and driest eco-systems on this planet are so intimately intertwined. Here is how it works as we now understand as a result of the massive experiment we have been conducting in altering those two eco-systems by raising the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere by 50%. Had this massive atmospheric enrichment experiment called fossil fuel burning not occurred we might not have seen the desert and ocean link.

We know plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and give back oxygen. They do this the same way all life on the planet exchanges gases with the air. They have to expose wet tissues to the air where the gas exchange takes place. We humans do this by opening our lungs and drawing in air to expose it to the wet tissues in our bodies. Plants do this by open cells on their leaves called stomata and allowing the air to exchange gases with wet tissues inside the leaf. We all pay for our oxygen CO2 exchange with molecules of water that evaporate from those wet tissues. We can see this water when we exhale into cold air and see our breath form a cloud. Plants are no different than us in that the majority of water lost is via breathing.

For plants that have access to a relative abundance of water they can afford to trade water for CO2. For desert and dry land plants it is a very different story. Desert plants have evolved to have short fast life cycles so that they can live their lives in the short period that water is available. They trade precious water with the air for the CO2 they need to use in photosynthesis. Remember we are all "carbon" based life forms on this planet. All of that carbon comes from CO2 that is changed via the photosynthesis of plants which combine it with nutrients and minerals from the soil into what we animals find delicious and nutritious.

TODAY we see that the air has 50% more CO2 than it did a mere hundred years ago. Desert and dry land plants are very happy about this. They now obtain the CO2 they need at far less expense in terms of water loss. This preserves their water supply for many days, they grow larger, and they produce more foliage and more viable seeds. For the deserts and dry lands of earth this higher CO2 concentration in the air is a fantastic bounty and we see those deserts and dry lands of the Earth becoming greener over greater areas and for longer periods each year. We know that the best way to reduce the loss of topsoil and dust from blowing from the land is to better cover the land with vegetation. To be certain the dry lands and deserts still dry out and become dusty deserts but that dry dusty period becomes smaller and for a shorter time each year. This may be good news for deserts but there is a price to be paid. There is indisputable quantitative data showing dramatically reduced dust over the worlds oceans.

Enter the relationship of the deserts and dry lands with the oceans. We know that the ocean plants, phytoplankton, like their desert cousins have evolved a short life cycle. They live in an abundance of water but live in a desert of with regard to the nutrients and minerals that plants on earth take from the soil. So where do ocean plants get these nutrients and minerals... As it happens they get these from the land and the process of erosion that slowly wears down the earth and washes or blows it into the oceans. However some very critical mineral nutrients do not last long in the ocean ecosystem as being rather insoluble they dissolve slowly and sink quickly to the bottom. Chief in importance of these trace minerals required for photosynthesis and life on this planet is iron. Iron acts like a catalyst in photosynthesis with a very tiny amount being needed to empower a very great amount of photosynthesis. Evolution has adapted ocean plants to make use of iron in concentrations almost too small for us to measure.

So where do ocean plants obtain their iron? They obtain it from the deserts of the earth where that abundant red dust is red because of the iron it contains. The dust that blows from the deserts feed the ocean plants the tiny amounts of iron they need to survive and flourish. When these dust storms pass episodically over the oceans they dip down here and there in a random fashion and deliver the precious iron to the waiting ocean plants. As this is a rare and somewhat unpredictable event ocean plants have evolved to grow at much reduced level of productivity as their normal life. But if additional iron arrives via a fortuitous dust storm the have the capacity to bloom like the desert after a spring rain and bloom they do.

In a few short days a deep blue ocean can turn into a green pea soup as the ocean plants rush to make use of every last atom of iron before it sinks into the abyss. Along with this dusty iron stimulated bloom comes a growth of the entire food chain as tiny krill and other zooplankton rise to the dinner table and feed on the temporary bounty. The bloom is temporary as the other macro-nutrients that the plants need is in limited abundance as well and as it becomes exhausted like a wet spring in the desert the ocean bloom rapidly comes to an end. This particular patch of ocean water will not be able to bloom again until the slow mixing of the ocean replenishes the water with the dissolved macro-nutrients. This is natures way and it keeps our oceans rather more blue than green.

It is this delicate system that is now staggeringly out of balance due to rising CO2 in the atmosphere. It is a feedback system that is now spinning up like a giant typhoon gaining strength from the weakness of the oceans that threatens to change this planet in ways the likes of which our earthbound and earth focused climate modelers have never dreamed, and it is happening faster than we know.

There is now evidence that is unchallengeable that shows atmospheric CO2 is 50% higher than it was 150 years ago. There is correspondingly quantitative evidence showing the dramatic greening of dry and desert regions and the reduction of dust that is blowing from these regions over and onto the worlds oceans. We also know from studies from satellites and ships that the baseline productivity of the world’s great oceans is now stunningly reduced. The major oceans like the Pacific, Atlantic, and Southern oceans are 10-30% lower in productivity of ocean plants than they were a mere 25 years ago. If this rate of decline continues the oceans will become the deserts of this planet long before we humans notice a little warming and switch to a lighter jacket or sweater when we go out.

What is worse is that the amount of CO2 the now diminished oceans are already failing to remove from our atmosphere, remember the oceans cover over 70% of this blue planet. This is the power of a feedback system. As the oceans become deserts our atmosphere is losing the most powerful CO2 removal mechanism on the planet. This will result in a rise of atmospheric CO2 at a far greater rate than the earth bound atmospheric scientists have predicted. This is already apparent in the actual rates of rising CO2 concentration that are reported as being mysteriously faster than the models have predicted.

But this is not a story of inevitable doom and gloom. We can do something about this. As it happens the concentration of iron in the ocean on average is but a few parts per trillion. This number 1/ 1,000,000,000,000 is incredibly small and offers the opportunity for a form of eco-judo to be practiced. We know that raising the concentration of iron in a patch of ocean by only a few additional tens of parts per trillion can stimulate an ocean bloom. We also know that iron is super abundant on this earth in the form of iron ore which is indeed the same form of iron Mother Nature dusts her oceans with. With a very small effort relative to what we earthlings spend on countless luxuries we can replenish the dust that the oceans are dying for. In the bargain we will scrub the CO2 that we spew from our tailpipes and power plants from the air using the free sunlight energy, we will replenish the food chain of the ocean that all ocean life and those of us who eat fish from the sea depend on, and we be able to do this in an affordable safe manner. No small effort is required but the effort is not so large that we cannot succeed in a timely fashion. If we start now we may be able to save the oceans and ourselves.


Planktos Inc
Foster City, CA
www.planktos.com