Science and society: Marine microbial greenhouse gas emitters to prove

Warmers unsung climate as a single organism, once considered the type of bacteria.

Earth's oceans emit an estimated 30 percent of nitrous oxide or N2O, the introduction of the atmosphere. Yet the source of this greenhouse gas has found the scientists for years. Bacteria — long the leading candidate — you can generate the N2O, although the seas did not seem to include sufficient to cover all the N2O, who were coughing up sea world. Now researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and MIT offer a candidate more likely: archaea.

The seas contain more than enough of these single as microbes (once considered the type of bacteria). In addition, the Massachusetts-based researchers, new data shows these micro-organisms have a tendency to convert ammonia in N2O. And there is no lack of ammonia in the oceans.

"In principle already figured out that the most abundant organism on the planet makes greenhouse gas very," observes the microbial Alyson Santoro Woods Hole oceanographer, led a new investigation. And not only are the most abundant Archaea microbes usually says, but it is also the majority of the inhabitants of numerous marine world. The findings by the members of the band appeared online on July 28, in science.

Despite their vast numbers of the presence of marine Archaea only came to light in 1992, he says. Just over a dozen years later, an articulated the paper emerged suggesting that the transfer of these bacteria can break down ammonia. "What we have now been shown" Santoro explains that "is that you can make the N2O" Archaea — and abundance, at least in the laboratory.

So what? Proportional oceanic production of N2O Archaea does not change the quantity of gas available to help the climate of warm Earth. But Santoro notes that you know its likely source is "an important first step in predicting N2O emissions as may change as the oceans warm or acidified low-oxygen areas — or Expand." All these conditions are likely to increase as global warming continues.

In fact, her group is wondering how Archaea can respond to the growing dead zones, similar to the one that forms in the Gulf of Mexico, each year (and in hundreds more coastal sites in the world). The concerns of researchers: as the oxygen concentration in seawater decreases ammonia oxidizing bacteria (or degrading) to their production of N2O.

Found in: Chemistry, climate and environment

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