Plankton can change the weather by making clouds
13 July 2004
by Richard
Conan-Davies
|
Incredibly it seems that plankton, those microscopic plants that make up much of the green in the ocean, seem to be doing a trick on the weather. Well at least during the summer plankton seem to be able to indirectly cause clouds to form. According to research by Dierdre Toole of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and David Siegel of the University of California , they showed that when plankton get stressed out by the intense summer sun (all that UV) they produuce a sulphur compound that may help them cope better with the UV. This compound gets broken down by bacteria and is then released back into the air which acts to seed the air so that clouds can form more easily. This new research is presented in the Journal Geophysical Research Letters. |
 plankton in the seas as seen from space. Green shows the green pigement chlorophyll |
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