As polar ice melts, seabed life is working against climate change

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/cp-api091515.php

Public Release: 21-Sep-2015
As polar ice melts, seabed life is working against climate change

When it comes to climate change, it's rare to get any good news. But a researcher who's reported evidence in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 21, after more than two decades of study, has some: the loss of sea ice over Antarctic waters in some areas has led to the increased growth of creatures living on the seafloor. Those underwater assemblages are acting as an important and unexpected carbon sink.

"It was a surprise that life had been invisibly responding to climate change for more than a decade below one of the most obviously visible impacts of climate change: the 'blueing' poles," says David Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). "We've found that a significant area of the planet--more than three million square kilometers--is a considerable carbon sink and, more importantly, a negative feedback on climate change."

In fact, most of the known consequences of climate change have made matters worse instead of better. For example, Barnes says, as the polar climate warms, sea ice melts. As sea ice has melted, the Earth's surface has turned from reflective white to a much darker blue at the poles, absorbing more heat and melting even more ice.

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Barnes says that the surprising differences in the amount of carbon taken up in different regions in Antarctica linked closely to the sea ice losses at each location. In more encouraging news, they found that the South Orkney Islands--the world's first High Seas Marine Protected Area--"is bang on a carbon hotspot, without us realizing!"

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"The forests you can see are important with respect to the carbon cycle and climate change, but two-thirds of our planet is ocean, and below it the life you can't see is also very important in climate responses as well," Barnes says.

It will now be important to find out whether similar things are happening in the Arctic.