According to a news release from the University of East Anglia, researchers have discovered that climate change will upset vital ocean chemical cycles. They demonstrate that increasing ocean temperatures will disturb natural cycles of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorous.

Plankton removes half of all CO2 from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and keeps it deep under the sea — sequestered from the atmosphere for hundreds of years. However, water temperature has a direct effect on continuing the fragile plankton ecosystem of our oceans.

The new findings suggest that ocean warming will affect plankton, and as a result encourage a nasty cycle of climate change.

Researchers decided to take a closer look at phytoplankton — tiny plant-like organisms that depend on photosynthesis to reproduce and grow.

“Phytoplankton, including micro-algae, are responsible for half of the carbon dioxide that is naturally removed from the atmosphere. As well as being vital to climate control, it also creates enough oxygen for every other breath we take, and forms the base of the food chain for fisheries so it is incredibly important for food security,” said lead researcher Dr. Thomas Mock.

According to Dr. Mock, this is the first time that research has revealed that warmer temperatures directly affect the chemical cycles in plankton.

Researchers at the University of Exeter created computer-produced models to develop a global ecosystem model that considered world ocean temperatures, 1.5 million plankton DNA sequences obtained from samples and biochemical data.

“We found that temperature plays a critical role in driving the cycling of chemicals in marine micro-algae. It affects these reactions as much as nutrients and light, which was not known before,” Dr. Mock noted. “Under warmer temperatures, marine micro-algae do not seem to produce as many ribosomes as under lower temperatures. Ribosomes join up the building blocks of proteins in cells. They are rich in phosphorous and if they are being reduced, this will produce higher ratios of nitrogen compared to phosphorous, increasing the demand for nitrogen in the oceans.”

According to Dr. Mock, this situation will ultimately result in a more widespread presence of blue-green algae known as cyanobacteria which fix atmospheric nitrogen.

The study’s results are discussed in greater detail in the journal Nature Climate Change.