Month: January 2016

Quirks & Quarks: The Planet Remade – through geoengineering (radio broadcast)

“Oliver Morton, a science journalist and Essays and Briefings Editor at the Economist magazine in London, England, examines the case for geoengineering in his new book, The Planet Remade – How Geoengineering[nbsp]Could Change the World. He looks at the risks and potential benefits of climate engineering, which include technical challenges and managing unintended consequences.

Link

Costa, K. M.; et al. (2016): No iron fertilization in the equatorial Pacific Ocean during the last ice age

Costa, K. M.; McManus, J. F.; Anderson, R. F.; Ren, H.; Sigman, D. M.; Winckler, G. et al. (2016): No iron fertilization in the equatorial Pacific Ocean during the last ice age. In Nature 529 (7587), pp. 519–522. DOI 10.1038/nature16453.

“Here we present meridional transects of dust (derived from the 232Th proxy), phytoplankton productivity (using opal, 231Pa/230Th and excess Ba), and the degree of nitrate consumption (using foraminifera-bound δ15N) from six cores in the central equatorial Pacific for the Holocene (0–10,000 years ago) and the LGP (17,000–27,000 years ago). We find that, although dust deposition in the central equatorial Pacific was two to three times greater in the LGP than in the Holocene, productivity was the same or lower, and the degree of nitrate consumption was the same. These biogeochemical findings suggest that the relatively greater ice-age dust fluxes were not large enough to provide substantial iron fertilization to the central equatorial Pacific.”

Link