Huge blooms of noxious duckweed look, from above, like pea-green wigs spread out in the sun.
Adding iron to the seas prompts huge blooms of these microbes, which absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, and when they die some of these plankton fall to the ocean floor, locking away carbon.
Two papers published this week suggest, though, that those hopes may be misplaced.The first, by a group of researchers from Britain's National Oceanography Centre, led by Raymond Pollard, looked at the idea of dumping iron in the oceans to promote huge blooms of phytoplankton tiny algae that consume carbon dioxide as they grow.
In the spring, higher flows contribute a pulse of nutrients that triggers huge blooms of algae.
While Kudela hesitated to directly attribute the dangerous Dungeness crabs to climate change, he did say the unusually high levels of domoic acid in crabs, caused by huge blooms of algae in warm water, looks exactly like what he'd expect climate change to look like in this situation.
In the Gulf of Mexico, a foreign jellyfish produced a huge bloom off Alabama's coastline last summer, reported Monty Graham of the state's Sea Lab on Dauphin Island.
In summer 2017, they saw a huge bloom within just a few July days.
Jellyfish are rather beautiful in an alien sort of way, helped in this supernatural quality by the fact they tend to arrive in a huge bloom overnight.
Each spring, the waters of the North Atlantic host a huge natural bloom of phytoplankton - microscopic plant-like organisms that are not only key for carbon cycling but may also influence clouds and climate.
