Dartmouth study solves a marine mystery by tying ocean biomarker to pollution levels.
A Dartmouth-led study on ice cores from Alaska and Greenland found that air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels reaches the remote Arctic in amounts large enough to alter its fundamental atmospheric chemistry. The findings illustrate the long reach of fossil fuel emissions and provide support for the importance of clean-air rules, which the team found can reverse the effect.
The impact of pollution on the Arctic began as soon as widespread fossil fuel usage took hold during the industrial era, the researchers report in Nature Geoscience. The researchers detected this footprint in an unexpected place—they measured declines in an airborne byproduct of marine phytoplankton activity known as methanesulfonic acid, or MSA, captured in the ice cores when air pollution began to rise.
Phytoplankton are key species in ocean food webs and carbon cycles considered a bellwether of the ocean’s response to climate change. MSA has been used by scientists as an indicator of reduced phytoplankton productivity and, thus, of an ocean ecosystem in distress.
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Image: The Dartmouth-led study analyzed ice core data from Greenland and a 700-foot core members of the research team extracted from Denali National Park and Preserve in 2013. The Denali ice core contains a millennium of climate data in the form of gas bubbles, particulates, and compounds trapped in the ice. (Credit: Photo by Mike Waszkiewicz)
