(Why Chernobyl mammalian wildlife survive)
WHY GREENING in the oceans too?
Phytoplankton are photosynthetic organisms, and thus behave as their land counterparts do. That is, they grow faster and sequester carbon dioxide away from the atmosphere more quickly as this gas increases.
In addition, the Arctic Ocean’s rate of productivity has massively increased in the past few decades as permanent Arctic ice cover has receded. This has allowed phytoplankton to cover the liquid parts of the Arctic Ocean. Whereas before, that was impossible as these were all permanent floating ice.
(Important note: There have been dire warnings that the melting of Arctic ice will raise the sea level to the extent low areas of the world will get inundated by the sea. That may be true if the ice that melts is on the surface of continents such as Antarctica and possibly Greenland to a lesser extent. But floating ice displaces nearly as much liquid water as makes up its volume. Melting it won’t raise the water level much. If you want to see for yourself, dump an ice cube on a glass of water. Notice that most of its mass is beneath the liquid water, displacing it up, and only about a seventh peeps above the water level. Thus, when the ice cube melts, the water level stays the nearly the same. Ditto for floating Arctic ice. If it all melts, the world ocean sea level won’t get affected much.)
The same may be true for the tundra of Eurasia ad Northern America. If ice in soils and permafrost melt, photosynthetic plants can grow on them faster and in more massive quantities.
Much has been said of the buried organic matter emitting methane in the warming and thus less icy tundra. However, nothing much is being said or studied about the biomass of being produced by these newly growing plants, or the fact that there are now numerous methanotrophs (methane-eating microbes) in these soils that capture much of the methane before it can escape into the atmosphere.
(Methane is a greenhouse gas with an atmospheric half-life of 7 to 10 years according to various sources, before getting oxidized into carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.)
These plants represent a carbon sink, if they and their parts don’t get burned or biologically decomposed.
In conclusion, responsible forestry and the practice of charring are two massive ongoing human endeavors that effectively sequester carbon dioxide away from the atmosphere. And if we are talking purely about photosynthesis, the anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has been the most massive human activity that has increased photosynthesis in the biosphere, although of course that represents a net output of carbon dioxide. (For comments and suggestions please email to mabuhibisaya2017@gmail.com)
