BONNER COHEN: Study: Marine Life In Oceans Has A Cooling Effect On Climate

Putting another nail in the coffin of the mantra that “the science is settled on climate change,” researchers in Spain have found that global emissions of a sulfur gas produced by marine life have a hitherto unknown cooling effect on temperatures.

It has long been known that oceans capture and redistribute the sun’s heat.  But there is more to the story.  A study published Nov. 29 in the journal Science Advances noted that oceans, notably in the Southern Hemisphere, produce gases known as marine sulfur.  And one of these gases, methanethiol, influences the climate in a way that has gone unnoticed.

Microscopic plankton living on the surface of the oceans “produce sulfur in the form of a gas, dimethyl sulphide, that once in the atmosphere, oxidizes and forms small particles called aerosols,” the University of East Anglia (UEA) said in a news release.

“Aerosols reflect part of the solar radiation back into space and therefore reduce the heat retained by the Earth,” UEA explained.  “Their cooling effect is magnified when they become involved in making clouds, with an effect opposite to, but of the same magnitude as, that of the well-known warming greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide or methane.”

The study is “Marine Emissions of Methanethiol Increase Aerosol Cooling in the Southern Ocean.”  It is, UEA noted, based on measurements of methanethiol the researchers gathered in seawater, added those they had made in the Southern Ocean and the Mediterranean coast, “and statistically related them to seawater temperature, obtained from satellites.”