Even phytoplankton are letting us down when it comes to global warming. These microscopic ocean-dwelling plants, which were thought to be gobbling up atmospheric carbon dioxide, are apparently not doing as well as was hoped.
In the past, satellite images of ocean colour were the main tool for measuring photosynthetic biomass: the greener the ocean the more CO2 was being taken up by the phytoplankton. This idea now seems to be misleading.
Peter Strutton of Oregon State University and colleagues studied phytoplankton fluorescence in the tropical Pacific using data from 12 years and 58,000 kilometres of ship transects and…
