Plankton Can Make Clouds To Block UV

NotWallaceStevens writes "This article on Science Daily describes how plankton can create clouds in response to seasonal variations in UV radiation from the sun by producing a chemical called dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP). This was a long term study based on data going back to the 1950s collected in the Sargasso Sea. One of the researches theorizes that the process could slow global warming."

Does this mean..

[camelrider]

..that plankton are contributing to the `acid rain problem'?

Re:Does this mean..

[amide_one]

DMS does get oxidized, eventually, to sulfates (i.e., one of the acids in 'acid rain'). Is this important? Depends on how much is being produced this way, obviously, but according to this estimate [noaa.gov] the overall sulfur emission from oceanic sources (plankton, etc.) is about 20% of the emission from human activities (globally; it's more like 10% in the N. hemisphere, much higher anthropogenic emissions - mostly coal burning).

So the evil death plankton's sunscreen is some kind of factor in acid rain, but not

Re:Does this mean..

[IBX]

DMS (a very stinky volatile substance, making rotten cabbage to smell like rotting cabbage) gets oxidized to DMSO (odorless poorly volatile hygroscopic liquid). DMSO likes to stick to water molecules. Tthe resulting clump has lower vapor tension than water droplet - so the wet DMSO droplet starts growing.

DMSO is non-acidic. It may get broken down to methansulfonic acid eventualy (through dimethtlsulfone) but this is oxidative degradation is rather slow process. I think DMSO would rain out much sooner than

Nuke the Whales

[Wandering Wombat]

They're eating our UV protection!!!

Arggg!

[Madcapjack]

Argggg! Foiled by the Plankton!

~Dr. Whompinstompin

That's a coincidence.

[CosmeticLobotamy]

I had a roommate in college named Dimethylsulfoniopropionate.

Sometimes I get the feeling all of chemistry is just a put-on to see who can get people to say the silliest word. I mean, how would we know? That, "It's too small to see," stuff seems awfully convenient.

the ocean is the true regulator

[Anonymous Coward]

Its already known that algae on the ocean transforms 70% of the carbon dioxide produced on earth back to oxigen, and now plancton creates the remaining clouds?. We need a new army of tree huggers and convert them to ocean huggers, seriously i suggest stop coding java algorithms to enhance pr0n webcasts and put ur brains to work on saving the oceans!.

Clouds block UV?

[bchernicoff]

Then why do I get a sunburn even on cloudy days? I can imagine clouds block a certain amout of direct sunlight from reaching the ground which might keep temperatures cooler. Thus the claim of preventing global warming, but what impact does UV have in all this?

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Republicans through an endless series of tired tautologies, prove that their own enlightenment is responsible for the trees, and the rocks, and the birds in the air and because of that, they are obviously the most enlightened in all creation.

Re:News Flash!

[Aram Fingal]

The question is not whether life on Earth can survive human generated global warming. It will adapt. There's little question that life can even adapt to post-nuclear war conditions but that doesn't mean that humans would do well. We can survive the conditions of global warming, as hypothesized, but only at a cost to quality of life. That's the real issue at this point.

Re:News Flash!

[love2hateMS]

What global warming?

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba478/

Adaptive Systems

[Bob_Robertson]

Wow! State the obvious and get moderated as "troll". Earth is indeed a collection of self-adapting systems. Humans haven't put into the atmosphere what Krakatoa did in one eruption. Humans also tend to reduce the occurance and severity of wild fires, reducing particulate effects of that natural process, balancing some of the soot and other particulates we generate.

Don't feel bad, I said that private space launch is more efficient than NASA, and got moderated as "flamebait".

Jgardn, have you ever visited th

Re:Adaptive Systems

[femto]

> Humans haven't put into the atmosphere what Krakatoa did in one eruption.

That's an urban myth [nodak.edu] propagated by Ronald Regan.

Re:Adaptive Systems

[jgardn]

The urban myth you cite has no numbers and no references.

I found this out:

Krakatoa spat out about 10 cubic kilometers of debris - that's 10,000,000,000 cubic meters.

In 1989, the amount of debris produced by coal-firing power plants was about 1,000,000 cubic meters.

I'd say there's a couple orders of magnitude difference there, buddy. I believe coal-firing power plants produce far more pollution than our automobiles, natural gas power plants, and nuclear power plants.

endless bullshit

[Doc Ruby]

Krakatoa's debris was mostly dirt - large particles of silicon and carbon compounds. Only a tiny volume of that diry was either carcinogenic micro/nanoparticles, or greenhouse gases. Most of the filth spewing from coal plants is the kind poisonous to humans: short term cancer, and long term Greenhouse.

And more to the point, there's nothing we can do about Krakatoa, or the tinier volcanism since then, in which environment our ecology has evolved, and been selected as fit to survive. The coal, gas and nuclea

And in other news...

[shadow_slicer]

A 'stable' system was pressed out of its stability region today, prompting panic among scientists.

"The system is proven stable", CEO of Megacorp Inc. told reporters today. "No matter how much you upset a stable system, the system will return to normal. This is just a natural correction".

Others have expressed doubts. "W'RALL GUNNA DAI!" ex-hippie and hobo Jimmy was recorded as saying.

Leading scientists were unable to be reached for comment.

This has been a Fox News special report.

good riddance to some

[Doc Ruby]

The Earth, and some life, will survive the Greenhouse. Human civilization as we know it will not. As George Carlin has put it, now that the Earth has used us to create the plastic it wanted, it doesn't need us any more, and we'll be gone soon. Ironically, those with the most inflexible attachment to the lies that are destroying us also stand less chance of surviving the collapse they're fueling.

Sounds like...

[R2.0]

the plot for a new Spongebob episode

No Super plankton to the rescue

[ianchaos]

Any hope of lessening global warming through plankton activity are about zero. As the oceans are warming the plankton are dying. [planetark.org] It may have gone to far to rely on mother nature to help us turn this juggernaught around. And it's not just global warming that is killing the plankton but oceanic pollution [looking-glass.co.uk]as well (info at bottom of article).
Creatures as well as humans have survived through many devistating climate/environmental changes, but these changes took place over hundreds and more often thousands of years. We are at a point where we are seeing major climate change within a single generation. I don't know what the answer to the problem is, and it will undoubtedly take more that one solution to fix this mess, but something had better be done soon or we (as a civilization) are in for a bad hangover.

DMSP degrading bacteria sequenced

[oldbox]

The linked-to article and the original news release are lacking in an actual citation.

The actual paper is:
Toole, D. A., and D. A. Siegel (2004), Light-driven cycling of dimethylsulfide (DMS) in the Sargasso Sea: Closing the loop, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L09308, doi:10.1029/2004GL019581. [agu.org]
Unfortunately, you must subscribe to get more than just the abstract.

DMSP and DMS cycles are more complex than this brief article reports. DMSP is produced by algae, and some DMSP is broken down to DMS by algae a

Are you listening, Coppertone?

[sydbarrett74]

How about making this the active ingredient in sunscreen? SPF500 here we come!