Decline in oceans' phytoplankton alarms scientists [View All]

[jamesinca]

Decline in oceans' phytoplankton alarms scientists
Experts pondering whether reduction of marine plant life is linked to warming of the seas

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Monday, October 6, 2003

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Plant life covering the surface of the world's oceans, a vital resource that helps absorb the worst of the "greenhouse gases" involved in global warming, is disappearing at a dangerous rate, scientists have discovered.

Satellites and seagoing ships have confirmed the diminishing productivity of the microscopic plants, which oceanographers say is most striking in the waters of the North Pacific -- ranging as far up as the high Arctic.

Whether the lost productivity of the plants, called phytoplankton, is directly due to increased ocean temperatures that have been recorded for at least the past 20 years remains part of an extremely complex puzzle, says Watson W. Gregg, a NASA biologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., but it surely offers a fresh clue to the controversy over climate change.

According to Gregg, the greatest loss of phytoplankton has occurred where ocean temperatures have risen most significantly between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. In the North Atlantic summertime, sea surface temperatures rose about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit during that period, Gregg said, while in the North Pacific the ocean's surface temperatures rose about 7/10ths of a degree

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/06/MN31432.DTL

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I thought global warming did not exist, even if it did, it is harmless, Bush said so!