At present the central areas of the oceans are wet deserts; too depleted in nutrients to support the photosynthesising base of a significant food chain. The key factor that is missing is dissolved divalent iron that acts as a minor, but vital, nutrient for phytoplankton. Much of the soluble iron that does help stimulate plankton ‘blooms’ emanates from the land surface in wind blown dust (Palaeoclimatology September 2011) or dissolved in river water. A large potential source is from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which emit seawater that has circulated through the basalts of the oceanic crust. Such fluids hydrate the iron-rich mafic minerals olivine and pyroxene, which makes iron available for transport. The fluids originate from water held in the muddy, organic-rich sediments that coat the ocean floor, and have lost any oxygen present in ocean-bottom water. Their chemistry is highly reducing and thereby retains soluble iron liberated by crustal alteration to emanate from hydrothermal vents. Because cold ocean-bottom waters are oxygenated by virtue of having sunk from the surface as part of thermohaline circulation, it does seem that ferrous iron should quickly be oxidised and precipitated as trivalent ferric compounds soon after hydrothermal fluids emerge. However, if some was able to rise to the surface it could fertilise shallow ocean water and participate in phytoplankton blooms, the sinking of dead organic matter then effectively burying carbon beneath the ocean floor; a ‘biological pump’ in the carbon cycle with a direct influence on climate. Until recently this hypothesis had little observational support. Continue reading “Soluble iron, black smokers and climate”
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