New research suggests rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change will impact vital cycles of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorus, according to a press release.
The findings, published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, show ocean temperatures have a great impact on the plankton ecosystem. Plankton are important for how they regulate carbon dioxide by removing about half of all CO2 during photosynthesis and storing it deep underwater.
The study suggests the lower amount of plankton will cause warmer oceans, which will in turn influence climate change, found to be the initial decrease in plankton.
Researchers from the University of East Anglia's (UEA) School of Environmental Sciences and the School of Computing Sciences studied phytoplankton for their study. Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms and, similar to plants, they rely on photosynthesis to reproduce and grow.
"Previous studies have shown that phytoplankton communities respond to global warming by changes in diversity and productivity," said lead researcher Dr. Thomas Mock. "But with our study we show that warmer temperatures directly impact the chemical cycles in plankton, which has not been shown before."
The study was co-authored by researchers from the University of Exeter, who generated computer models of a global ecosystem taking the oceans' temperature, more than a million plankton DNA sequences and biochemical data into account.
"We found that temperature plays a critical role in driving the cycling of chemicals in marine micro-algae," Mock said. "It affects these reactions as much as nutrients and light, which was not known before."
He said warmer temperatures do not promote the production of ribosomes as lower temperatures do.
"Under warmer temperatures, marine micro-algae do not seem to produce as many ribosomes as under lower temperatures. Ribosomes join up the building blocks of proteins in cells," Mock said. "They are rich in phosphorous and if they are being reduced, this will produce higher ratios of nitrogen compared to phosphorous, increasing the demand for nitrogen in the oceans."
