The Earth’s climate is an extremely complex system that is driven by the subtle balance of many different processes—a key one of which is the air-sea exchange of CO2. Monitoring the ocean’s uptake of CO2 is key to our understanding of climate change, and scientists at EPFL and at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO, France) have recently discovered a new part of the process. They identified a new source of organic phosphorus delivered from the atmosphere which potentially will help phytoplankton and microalgae growth, the latter of which play a crucial role in making our planet habitable. Organic phosphorus deposition to marine environments has not been studied till now, but this groundbreaking work showed it is an important—and completely overlooked—source of the critical nutrient, with important implications for climate. The scientists’ findings were recently published in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.
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Source: Phys.org