Can Whales Cool Antarctica? from Stephen Curtain on Vimeo.
Having decimated over 90% of the world’s whales in the last centuries, are there enough whales and their excreta to create the phytoplankton blooms that generate the aerosols and the clouds needed to cool and secure Antarctica?
A number of recent scientific and general articles explore the role of whales in planetary ecology and natural ocean cooling while Sir David Attenborough and Cambridge Centre for Climate repair consider ‘refreezing the Arctic’.
Links
- Oceanic phytoplankton, atmospheric sulphur, cloud albedo and climate.
- DMS: The Climate Gas You’ve Never Heard Of Made by tiny plants in the ocean, dimethylsulfide helps make clouds in the sky.
- Baleen whale prey consumption based on high-resolution foraging measurements.
- Restoring whales to their pre-hunted numbers could capture 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2 a year.
- The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind.