Another Option Dimming

Carbon sequestration (that is, the storage of atmospheric carbon where it will not quickly re-enter the atmosphere) has been the long sought magic bullet to slay the problem of global warming, allowing us to maintain our carbon intensive lifestyles.

One possibility was to fertilize the Southern Ocean with iron to create algal blooms, that then die and settle into deep oceanic sediments, carrying their carbon with them.

While early research was promising, to some degree, new research is not nearly so optimistic. Pollard and colleagues report in the Jan 29th edition of Nature (2009), that rates of carbon sequestration are much lower than previously reported.  At the rates reported by Pollard even the fertilization of every ocean on the planet would not help significantly.

Regardless, the RV Polarstern (shown above) is now adding 20 tonnes of iron to an area of the Southern Ocean between Antarctica and Argentina.   Data from this experiment should settle the matter, but it does not sound promising.

Photo Credit: Hannes Grobe, Wikipedia Commons