The Australian bushfires of the 2019/2020 summer had far-reaching effects. It has now been revealed in new research published in Nature that the smoke produced a phytoplankton bloom larger in area than all of Australia, thousands of kilometres away in the Southern Ocean between New Zealand and South America.
Welcome to the first Weather and Climate Interactions RP report. The new program name is simply a result of rationalising CLEX’s continuing research program under new headings that more clearly delineate the focus of the work we do.
Coral reefs are known to produce a chemical called dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which, when released into the atmosphere, can help form or grow tiny particles known as aerosols. Currently, this source of aerosols produced by coral reefs is unaccounted for in climate science and hence the impact of coral reef extinction on aerosols and climate is unknown.
While the data from Himiwari-8 provides very useful data on clouds at relatively high resolution, researchers need to know if it produced any biases, particularly around cloud-top height and cloud-top temperature, whose roles are critical in shaping Earth’s climate. CLEX researchers and Australian colleagues compared the Himawari-8 data for both of these measures with existing datasets.
James Haywood (University of Exeter). Aerosols: their role in climate forcing, climate response, and possible future geoengineering scenarios.
The study finds important regional consequences for precipitation and clouds formation if large changes in dimethyl-sulfide emissions were to occur. In a hypothetical case where all marine DMS emissions cease completely, we find the Earth would warm by approximately 0.5 degrees C over a ten-year period.