Antarctic Icebergs Play a Previously Unknown Role in Global Carbon Cycle, Climate

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http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=119058&org=NSF&from=news

Press Release 11-059

Antarctic Icebergs Play a Previously Unknown Role in Global Carbon Cycle, Climate

Passage of icebergs through surface waters changes their physical and biological characteristics

March 25, 2011

View the http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsmedia/iceberg_alley/">photo gallery "A Trip Down Iceberg Alley."

In a finding that has global implications for climate research, scientists have discovered that when icebergs cool and dilute the seas through which they pass for days, they also raise chlorophyll levels in the water that may in turn increase carbon dioxide absorption in the Southern Ocean.

An interdisciplinary research team supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) highlighted the research this month in the journal Nature Geosciences.

The research indicates that "iceberg transport and melting have a role in the distribution of phytoplankton in the Weddell Sea," which was previously unsuspected, said John J. Helly, director of the Laboratory for Environmental and Earth Sciences with the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Helly was the lead author of the paper, "Cooling, Dilution and Mixing of Ocean Water by Free-drifting Icebergs in the Weddell Sea," which was first published in the journal Deep-Sea Research Part II.

The results indicate that icebergs are especially likely to influence phytoplankton dynamics in an area known as "Iceberg Alley," east of the Antarctic Peninsula, the portion of the continent that extends northwards toward Chile.

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"These new findings amplify the team's previous discoveries about icebergs and confirm that icebergs contribute yet another, previously unsuspected, dimension of physical and biological complexity to polar ecosystems," said Roberta L. Marinelli, director of the NSF's Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems Program.

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1. Next up: House Republicans slash funds for iceberg research! nt