Australian fire nourishes ocean phytoplankton bloom

Yuntao Wang; Huan-Huan Chen; Rui Tang; Ding He; Zhongping Lee; Huijie Xue; Mark Wells; Emmanuel Boss; Fei Chai

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150775

Australian fire nourishes ocean phytoplankton bloom

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Feb 10;807(Pt 1):150775. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150775. Epub 2021 Oct 5.

Authors

Yuntao Wang¹, Huan-Huan Chen², Rui Tang¹, Ding He³, Zhongping Lee⁴, Huijie Xue⁵, Mark Wells⁶, Emmanuel Boss⁷, Fei Chai⁸

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China; Ocean College, Zhejiang University, Zhoushan 316021, China.
³ Department of Ocean Science and Hong Kong Branch of the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China; Organic Geochemistry Unit, School of Earth Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
⁴ School for the Environment, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston 02125, USA.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102, China; College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102, China.
⁶ School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono 04469, USA; State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China.
⁷ School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono 04469, USA.
⁸ State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China; Ocean College, Zhejiang University, Zhoushan 316021, China. Electronic address: fchai@sio.org.cn.

PMID: 34619187
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150775

Abstract

An unprecedented devastating forest fire occurred in Australia from September 2019 to March 2020. Satellite observations revealed that this rare fire event in Australia destroyed a record amount of more than 202,387 km² of forest, including 56,471 km² in eastern Australia, which is mostly composed of evergreen forest. The released aerosols contained essential nutrients for the growth of marine phytoplankton and were transported by westerly winds over the Southern Ocean, with rainfall-induced deposition to the ocean beneath. Here, we show that a prominent oceanic bloom, indicated by the rapid growth of phytoplankton, took place in the Southern Ocean along the trajectory of fire-born aerosols in response to atmospheric deposition. Calculations of carbon released during the fire versus carbon absorbed by the oceanic phytoplankton bloom suggest that they were nearly equal. This finding illustrates the critical role of the oceans in mitigating natural and anthropogenic carbon dioxide releases to the atmosphere, which are a primary driver of climate change.

Keywords: Aerosol; Carbon assimilation; Forest fire; Ocean phytoplankton; Southern Ocean.

MeSH terms

Aerosols
Atmosphere*
Australia
Oceans and Seas
Phytoplankton*
Seawater

Substances

Aerosols