The Antarctica and Greenland have become two of the Climate change thermometers. The Ice loss in Greenland It is something that has been monitored for years because not only influences sea level: also in the Sinking of the seabed. It is estimated that Greenland’s glaciers have reached a point of no returnand its implications go beyond sea level. In fact, a recent NASA study He points out that there is a beneficiary of the thaw: the phytoplankton.
And it is not good news.
Short. A few months ago we commented that Greenland was getting greener. The estimates point out that, during the last 30 years, the region has lost 1.6% of its ice, which may seem little, but it is something equivalent to the Galicia area. The air temperature is about 3 higher Celsius degrees in the period between 2007-2012 than in 1979-2000, and That thaw It is causing a huge increase in fresh water.
How much? According to the investigation of San José State University and NASA, of up to 266 million tons per year that are discharged into the sea, especially under the Jakobshavn glacier, the greatest in Greenland. It is the equivalent of 1,200 cubic meters of fresh water that are poured into the sea every second. As is fresh water, it is less dense and lighter than the salty, and what it does is like a whirlpool, dragging nutrients from the seabed to the surface.
The study. These nutrients are mainly iron and nitrates, and it is phenomenal to phytoplankton. It is, however, an anomaly, and the researchers wondered to what extent that rapid growth of the plankton could affect the ecosystem. In it studypublished in Nature, detail how with the help of a model developed in the JPL and the MIT and using superoringers to accelerate the calculations, simulated the interaction between the water of the thaw, the nutrients and the phytoplankton.
The greatest areas is where an increase in chlorophyll has been seen in recent years
They have discovered that the growth of the body in the studied area increases between 15% and 40% in summer, at which time the maximum point of the thaw is given, thanks to those nutrients that the fresh water current sends to the surface. In total, NASA has observed That, between 1998 and 2018, the growth of phytoplankton in argic waters had increased by 57%.
Consequences. On the one hand, that increase in phytoplankton can be positive for marine life, since it improves the basis of the ecosystem to be able to feed more animals, and also phytoplankton Atmospheric co -capture (that is not bad for us) To do photosynthesis. However, there is a paste: changes in temperature, chemical composition and water salinity can alter ecosystems.
In the study they have not launched predictions about what will happen, but it is evident that it is a substantial modification of the marine properties of that specific area. Its conclusion is that those Changes in the Food Chain They can modify the composition of marine species, from bacteria to fish, affecting both the equilibrium of the ecosystem and fishing activities, which are a key engine for Greenland.
Because phytoplankton is tiny, but it is the food of Kril and other small herbivores that, in turn, are the larger animal food baselike fish and whales.
Only in Greenland? This study was carried out in a very specific area, that of the Jakobshavn glacier, but the results have similar implications for the more than 250 marine glaciers in the region and, possibly, for other glaciers that end in the sea in other regions of the world.
Researchers comment that this simulation method is adaptable to other systems and that, therefore, it is likely that other areas where glaciers are pouring water into the sea They are also living, to a greater or lesser degree, a similar phenomenon, modifying ecosystems and affecting both fauna and fishing activities that are carried out in the area.
Therefore, the thaw of glaciers is no longer that it affects only at sea level, but has the potential for alter the ecological balance of the regions in which it occurs. As they say, we were few and the grandmother gave birth.
Images | POT
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