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Ocean fertilization will not help reduce CO2 levels, suggests experimentmongabay.comMarch 24, 2009
The Lohafex experiment, conducted by Indo-German team of scientists from the National Institute of Oceaonography and the Alfred Wegener Institute earlier this year, dumped 20 tons of iron sulphate into the Southern Ocean and measured the carbon uptake by plankton. Fertilization stimulated a short burst of phytoplankton growth which was negated by increased predation by crustaceans known as amphipods. "As a result, only a modest amount of carbon sank out of the surface layer by the end of the experiment," said the Alfred Wegener Institute in a statement. The experiment found that blooms of diatoms, a silica-based algae important in earlier carbon sequestration experiments, were limited by natural blooms that had already extracted all the silicic acid needed for shell building.
By the end of the experiment phytoplankton had stabilized at its original levels. The experiment found that "concentrations of gases other than CO2 produced by the plankton either did not change or increased negligibly in the bloom". "Some of these gases such as nitrous oxide and methane are potent greenhouse gases, others such as halogenated hydrocarbons contribute to stratospheric ozone depletion," noted the Alfred Wegener Institute. "The cooperative project Lohafex has yielded new insights on how ocean ecosystems function," the statement continued. "But it has dampened hopes on the potential of the Southern Ocean to sequester significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and thus mitigate global warming." Other research has produced similar results, suggesting that iron fertilization of oceans will not be an effective climate change mitigation strategy. "Ocean iron fertilization is simply no longer to be taken as a viable option for mitigation of the CO2 problem," Hein de Baar, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in Texel, told Nature News in January. Other studies have also looked at the introduction of calcium hydroxide (i.e. lime) as a way to reduce ocean acidification and its capacity to absorb CO2. Related articles Iron fertilization of oceans may be ineffective in fighting global warming (01/29/2009) Schemes to promote increased carbon uptake by plankton via iron fertilization of oceans will be less effective than previously believed, report researchers writing in the journal Nature. Geoengineering schemes need ranking system to avoid wasting money, destroying the planet (10/26/2008) Schemes to alter Earth's climate on a planetary scale should be ranked according to their efficacy, cost, risks and their rate of mitigation, argues a new editorial published in Nature Geoscience. With so-called geoengineering proposals proliferating as concerns over climate change mount, Philip Boyd of New Zealand's NIWA warns that "no geo-engineering proposal has been tested or even subjected to preliminary trials". He says that despite widespread media attention, scientists have yet to even come up with a way to rank geoegineering schemes for their efficacy, cost, associated risk, and timeframe. Thus is it unclear whether ideas like carbon burial, geochemical carbon capture, atmospheric carbon capture, ocean fertilization, cloud manipulation, "space sunshades", or strategically-placed pollution can be effective on a time-scale relevant to humankind, economical, or even safe. Planktos kills iron fertilization project due to environmental opposition (02/19/2008) Planktos, a California-based firm that planned a controversial iron-fertilization scheme in an attempt to qualify carbon offsets, announced that it failed to find sufficient funding for its efforts and would postpone its project indefinitely. Too early to say if iron seeding will slow global warming - scientists (01/10/2008) Schemes to use feed the ocean with iron as a way to enhance carbon sequestration from the atmosphere are premature and could be damaging to sea life and marine ecosystems, warns a letter published in the journal Science by an international group of scientists. New research discredits a $100 billion geoengineering fix to global warming (11/29/2007) Scientists have revealed an important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected $100 billion venture.
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