Latest news with #carbonstorage
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Tiny creatures gorge, get fat, and help fight global warming
A tiny, obscure animal often sold as aquarium food has been quietly protecting our planet from global warming by undertaking an epic migration, according to new research. These "unsung heroes" called zooplankton gorge themselves and grow fat in spring before sinking hundreds of metres into the deep ocean in Antarctica where they burn the fat. This locks away as much planet-warming carbon as the annual emissions of roughly 55 million petrol cars, stopping it from further warming our atmosphere, according to researchers. This is much more than scientists expected. But just as researchers uncover this service to our planet, threats to the zooplankton are growing. Scientists have spent years probing the animal's annual migration in Antarctic waters, or the Southern Ocean, and what it means for climate change. The findings are "remarkable", says lead author Dr Guang Yang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, adding that it forces a re-think about how much carbon the Southern Ocean stores. "The animals are an unsung hero because they have such a cool way of life," says co-author Dr Jennifer Freer from British Antarctic Survey. But compared to the most popular Antarctic animals like the whale or penguin, the small but mighty zooplankton are overlooked and under-appreciated. If anyone has heard of them, it's probably as a type of fish food available to buy online. But their life cycle is odd and fascinating. Take the copepod, a type of zooplankton that is a distant relative of crabs and lobsters. Just 1-10mm in size, they spend most of their lives asleep between 500m to 2km deep in the ocean. In pictures taken under a microscope, you can see long sausages of fat inside their bodies, and fat bubbles in their heads, explains Prof Daniel Mayor who photographed them in Antarctica. Without them, our planet's atmosphere would be significantly warmer. Globally the oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat humans have created by burning fossil fuels. Of that figure, the Southern Ocean is responsible for about 40%, and a lot of that is down to zooplankton. Millions of pounds is being spent globally to understand how exactly they store carbon. Scientists were already aware that the zooplankton contributed to carbon storage in a daily process when the animals carbon-rich waste sinks to the deep ocean. But what happened when the animals migrate in the Southern Ocean had not been quantified. The latest research focussed on copepods, as well as other types of zooplankton called krill, and salps. The creatures eat phytoplankton on the ocean surface which grow by transforming carbon dioxide into living matter through photosynthesis. This turns into fat in the zooplankton. "Their fat is like a battery pack. When they spend the winter deep in the ocean, they just sit and slowly burn off this fat or carbon," explains Prof Daniel Mayor at University of Exeter, who was not part of the study. "This releases carbon dioxide. Because of the way the oceans work, if you put carbon really deep down, it takes decades or even centuries for that CO2 to come out and contribute to atmospheric warming," he says. The research team calculated that this process - called the seasonal vertical migration pump - transports 65 million tonnes of carbon annually to at least 500m below the ocean surface. Of that, it found that copepods contribute the most, followed by krill and salps. That is roughly equivalent to the emissions from driving 55 million diesel cars for a year, according to a greenhouse gas emissions calculator by the US EPA. The latest research looked at data stretching back to the 1920s to quantify this carbon storage, also called carbon sequestration. But the scientific discovery is ongoing as researchers seek to understand more details about the migration cycle. Earlier this year, Dr Freer and Prof Mayor spent two months on the Sir David Attenborough polar research ship near the South Orkney island and South Georgia. Using large nets the scientists caught zooplankton and brought the animals onboard. "We worked in complete darkness under red light so we didn't disturb them," says Dr Freer. "Others worked in rooms kept at 3-4C. You wear a lot of protection to stay there for hours at a time looking down the microscope," she adds. But warming waters as well as commercial harvesting of krill could threaten the future of zooplankton. "Climate change, disturbance to ocean layers and extreme weather are all threats," explains Prof Atkinson. This could reduce the amount of zooplankton in Antarctica and limit the carbon stored in the deep ocean. Krill fishing companies harvested almost half a million tonnes of krill in 2020, according to the UN. It is permitted under international law, but has been criticised by environmental campaigners including in the recent David Attenborough Ocean documentary. The scientists say their new findings should be incorporated into climate models that forecast how much our planet will warm. "If this biological pump didn't exist, atmospheric CO2 levels would be roughly twice those as they are at the moment. So the oceans are doing a pretty good job of mopping up CO2 and getting rid of it," explains co-author Prof Angus Atkinson. The research is published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography. Why scientists are counting tiny marine creatures, from Space 'Glimmer of hope' for marine life at UN Ocean conference A simple guide to climate change Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC's Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
BBC News
5 days ago
- Science
- BBC News
Tiny creature gorges, gets fat, and locks up planet-warming carbon
A tiny, obscure animal often sold as aquarium food has been quietly protecting our planet from global warming by undertaking an epic migration, according to new "unsung heroes" called zooplankton gorge themselves and grow fat in spring before sinking hundreds of metres into the deep ocean in Antarctica where they burn the locks away as much planet-warming carbon as the annual emissions of roughly 55 million petrol cars, stopping it from further warming our atmosphere, according to is much more than scientists expected. But just as researchers uncover this service to our planet, threats to the zooplankton are growing. Scientists have spent years probing the animal's annual migration in Antarctic waters, or the Southern Ocean, and what it means for climate findings are "remarkable", says lead author Dr Guang Yang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, adding that it forces a re-think about how much carbon the Southern Ocean stores. "The animals are an unsung hero because they have such a cool way of life," says co-author Dr Jennifer Freer from British Antarctic compared to the most popular Antarctic animals like the whale or penguin, the small but mighty zooplankton are overlooked and under-appreciated. If anyone has heard of them, it's probably as a type of fish food available to buy their life cycle is odd and fascinating. Take the copepod, a type of zooplankton that is a distant relative of crabs and 1-10mm in size, they spend most of their lives asleep between 500m to 2km deep in the ocean. In pictures taken under a microscope, you can see long sausages of fat inside their bodies, and fat bubbles in their heads, explains Prof Daniel Mayor who photographed them in them, our planet's atmosphere would be significantly the oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat humans have created by burning fossil fuels. Of that figure, the Southern Ocean is responsible for about 40%, and a lot of that is down to zooplankton. Millions of pounds is being spent globally to understand how exactly they store were already aware that the zooplankton contributed to carbon storage in a daily process when the animals carbon-rich waste sinks to the deep what happened when the animals migrate in the Southern Ocean had not been quantified. The latest research focussed on copepods, as well as other types of zooplankton called krill, and creatures eat phytoplankton on the ocean surface which grow by transforming carbon dioxide into living matter through photosynthesis. This turns into fat in the zooplankton."Their fat is like a battery pack. When they spend the winter deep in the ocean, they just sit and slowly burn off this fat or carbon," explains Prof Daniel Mayor at University of Exeter, who was not part of the study."This releases carbon dioxide. Because of the way the oceans work, if you put carbon really deep down, it takes decades or even centuries for that CO2 to come out and contribute to atmospheric warming," he says. The research team calculated that this process - called the seasonal vertical migration pump - transports 65 million tonnes of carbon annually to at least 500m below the ocean that, it found that copepods contribute the most, followed by krill and is roughly equivalent to the emissions from driving 55 million diesel cars for a year, according to a greenhouse gas emissions calculator by the US EPA. The latest research looked at data stretching back to the 1920s to quantify this carbon storage, also called carbon the scientific discovery is ongoing as researchers seek to understand more details about the migration cycle. Earlier this year, Dr Freer and Prof Mayor spent two months on the Sir David Attenborough polar research ship near the South Orkney island and South large nets the scientists caught zooplankton and brought the animals onboard."We worked in complete darkness under red light so we didn't disturb them," says Dr Freer."Others worked in rooms kept at 3-4C. You wear a lot of protection to stay there for hours at a time looking down the microscope," she adds. But warming waters as well as commercial harvesting of krill could threaten the future of zooplankton."Climate change, disturbance to ocean layers and extreme weather are all threats," explains Prof could reduce the amount of zooplankton in Antarctica and limit the carbon stored in the deep fishing companies harvested almost half a million tonnes of krill in 2020, according to the is permitted under international law, but has been criticised by environmental campaigners including in the recent David Attenborough Ocean scientists say their new findings should be incorporated into climate models that forecast how much our planet will warm."If this biological pump didn't exist, atmospheric CO2 levels would be roughly twice those as they are at the moment. So the oceans are doing a pretty good job of mopping up CO2 and getting rid of it," explains co-author Prof Angus research is published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography. Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC's Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
CBC
6 days ago
- Science
- CBC
Eelgrass meadows: the coastal lifeline at risk
Join Rachael Tancock as she dives beneath the waves to explore the hidden world of eelgrass, an underwater flowering plant that forms lush meadows along the B.C. coast. In this episode, Rachael meets eelgrass expert Sarah Cook, who is working to restore these vital habitats and shares why eelgrass is so important for marine life, coastal protection, and carbon storage. With beautiful underwater footage and expert insights, this video will change the way you see the seafloor and highlight the big impact of a small, swaying plant. 'Planting Curiosity' is a CBC Creator Network series that dives into the wonderful and wild world of plants.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Plants have a secret, second set of roots deep underground that scientists didn't know about
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Our understanding of plant and tree roots may have been somewhat shallow. New research reveals many plants have a hidden second set of roots that extend far deeper into the soil. According to a new study published June 17 in the journal Nature Communications, this second layer of roots extend over 3 feet (1 meter) down and enable the plant to access deeper soil nutrients. The findings suggest plants might transport and store carbon deeper in the ground than expected, which could help scientists develop longer-term underground carbon storage to mitigate climate change impacts. To analyze these deeper rooting systems on a large scale, the researchers used a database of soil samples collected from more than 6 feet (1.8 m) below the surface. From this, they detected root patterns and soil composition from 44 sites. These sites were from a range of climate zones and ecosystems across the globe, from the Alaskan tundra to rainforests in Puerto Rico. The findings showed about 20% of the sites around the world had roots that peaked in mass twice along their depth, meaning these plants had a second, deeper system of roots — a phenomenon the researchers call "bimodality." "We were very surprised by how frequently we find bimodal patterns," study lead author Mingzhen Lu, an ecologist at New York University, told Live Science in an email. For a long time scientists assumed plants had fewer and fewer roots as they went deeper into the ground, Lu said. Related: 'This should not be published': Scientists cast doubt on study claiming trees 'talk' before solar eclipses The second layer of roots typically reached soils rich in nutrients like nitrogen, enabling plants to tap into these deep-soil resources. Plants get most of their resources from surface soil, for example through rainfall or leaves falling on the ground, Lu said. But a deeper, secondary way to tap into nutrients could boost the resources available to plants if they're not sufficient at the surface. As only 1 in 5 plants had these roots, this could indicate an opportunistic response given particular conditions, like drier or more unreliable water in surface soil. "It is more of a choice," Lu explained. "Given enough motivation… plants will explore deeper and make use of these deep resources." Soil scientists need to look deeper to understand what's actually happening underground, the researchers said. "Sampling 10 centimeters [4 inches] deep, or 30 centimeters [12 inches], simply won't cut it," Lu said. "We just miss too much of what's actually going on in the soil." The idea that plants have deeper roots is not new, Alain Pierret, a soil scientist at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development who was not involved with the new study, told Live Science in an email. The traditional theory of diminishing roots deeper into the ground has previously been questioned, and the deep rooting phenomenon has been studied, but not in sufficient detail, Pierret added. "What is new and remarkable is the dedicated network of field stations used to observe relatively deep root profiles across a range of biomes," Pierret said. He added that more work is needed to fully understand what's going on in these deep rooting systems, and that the deep root systems are probably not only bimodal but likely multi-modal, with even more roots deeper into the ground below the depth the new study focused on. RELATED STORIES —Tropical tree in Panama has evolved to kill its 'enemies' with lightning —Where did the 1st seeds come from? —'Gossiping neighbors': Plants didn't evolve to be kind to each other, study finds The findings also mean scientists may have underestimated the potential for carbon storage in soil, according to the researchers. Soil can hold more carbon than the atmosphere, so some climate mitigation measures focus on crops that take in carbon from the air and store it in roots and soil. "Our current terrestrial carbon budget [is] most likely incorrect, with potentially significant implications for climate change mitigation strategies and policies," Pierret research team is now investigating what these findings mean for carbon storage. "The good news is plants may already be naturally mitigating climate change more actively than we've realized," Lu said in a statement. "We just need to dig deeper to fully understand their potential."
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Arctic warming spurs growth of carbon-soaking peatlands
Arctic peatlands are expanding as the climate warms, new research showed Thursday, a change that could slow global heating in the near term but have the opposite effect in future. Peatlands are the largest terrestrial store of carbon, locking away twice as much heat-trapping CO2 from the atmosphere in their waterlogged soils as all the world's forests. These carbon-rich reservoirs, composed of partially decayed organic matter, only cover three percent of Earth's surface, and generally fade out in the far north, where harsh weather limits plant growth. But warmer temperatures caused by climate change have improved growing conditions for plants in the Arctic, and satellite data has shown a general "greening" of this frosty region. Using drones, satellite imagery and on-the-ground observations, an international team of scientists assessed peatlands in the European and Canadian Arctic to see if they had benefited from warmer climes. They found strong evidence that peatlands "have likely undergone lateral expansion over the last 40 years" in the Arctic, which is the fastest-warming region on Earth. "The permafrost thaws a little, provides a water source for vegetation, and surface vegetation recovers. In this study, we specifically see a lateral expansion," Michelle Garneau, a professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and co-author of the study, told AFP. The most marked change was observed where summer temperatures have risen the most, such as in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. "All these new vegetated surfaces that didn't exist three decades ago are currently actively absorbing carbon," Garneau added. How Arctic peatlands respond to climate change in future is "still highly uncertain", said the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Communications Earth & Environment. Recent modelling suggests these northern peatlands "may become a carbon source from mid-century" as they dry out and permafrost thaws, the study said. They are also at risk from wildfires, which release masses of stored up carbon at once. "This means that in the short term, these expanding peatlands are a growing carbon sink in the Arctic," said study co-author Karen Anderson, a professor from the University of Exeter, which led the research. "But in the future, this could switch back, and this will happen because of higher temperatures and potentially things like fires," she told AFP. As peatlands expand, they also release methane, a potent greenhouse gas with far more heat-trapping capacity than CO2, though these emissions decline over time. "So while our study gives us some positive news, it does not detract from the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stabilise our climate," said Anderson. jmi/np/jhb
