Coral Reefs Create Clouds to Control the Climate

Neil Halelamien writes "New Scientist reports on research showing that coral reefs might cool off by creating their own clouds. The scientists showed that coral reefs are packed with a chemical called DMS, which helps clouds to form when it is released into the atmosphere. In experiments, the researchers have shown that 'corals produce more DMS when the symbiotic algae inside their tissues become stressed by high temperatures or UV radiation,' suggesting that this may be a mechanism corals evolved to help regulate their environment."

Comments

Re:Under the sea . . .

[Mattcelt]

I heard a quote the other day that only 1% of the earth's oceans have been explored. I'm tempted to say that that was an overstatement.

I know there are different forces involved

Technically, you are incorrect here; it's not different forces, but rather different amounts of the same basic forces. Compared to deep sea exploration, space exploration is easy: in space, most forces we feel here on earth - gravity, atmospheric pressure, earth's magnetism, mantle heat, etc. - are significantly reduced. This makes it simple to sustain life there - simply bring a little bit of those forces with us, enough to keep us alive.

The deep sea, otoh, has all of those forces in much greater quantity. The atmospheric pressure we feel at sea level (about 14.7lbs/in^2, IIRC) doubles every 33ft underwater. Rather than trying to keep a little atmosphere in like we would in space, we're trying to keep a bunch of atmospheres OUT. This is a much more complicated problem, espcially since the most remote parts of the deep ocean are miles below the surface...
in parts of the Mariana Trench, the sea floor is almost 7 miles (35,000 feet/11km) deep, and the pressure is more than 1000 atmospheres (14,000+lbs/in^2!).

This isn't to say that these places can't be explored - obviously they can, as we have sent probes to the bottom of the Mariana Trench - but that it makes it a whole lot more difficult than "just" sending a man to the moon.

DMSP source of DMS, microbial community produces

[oldbox]

This is part of a large body of research on DMS, its production, fate, and effect on climate. See pubmed for over a thousand citeations.

Allmost all the DMS produced in the oceans originally came from DMSP produced by algae (some corals have symbiotic algae). Some DMSP is broken down to DMS by the algae themselves, but bacteria seem to have a major role in breaking down DMSP to DMS, as well as to another compound, methanethiol, that is not released into the atmosphere in large amounts. Interestingly, the genome of a bacterium that carries out both pathways of DMSP degradation is sequenced. Hopefully this will soon allow us to find more about these two competing fates of DMSP. If you really want more information on this bacteria, you could read the discription paper.

bugbox