A microscopic marine alga is thriving in the North Atlantic to an extent that defies scientific predictions, suggesting swift environmental change as a result of carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean.
The meaning of these findings remains to be seen—as does whether the rapid growth in the tiny floating phytoplankton’s population is good or bad news for the planet.
A new study published in Science reports a tenfold increase in the abundance of single-cell organisms, called coccolithophores, between 1965 and 2010, and a particularly sharp spike since the late 1990s.
“Something strange is happening here, and it’s happening much more quickly than we thought it should,” says Anand Gnanadesikan, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University.
The new report is certainly good news for creatures that eat coccolithophores, but it’s not clear what those are, Gnanadesikan says. “What is worrisome is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function.”
