NASA: Massive Plankton Bloom under Thinning Ice

NASA:

Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. A NASA-sponsored expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice to find waters richer in microscopic marine plants, essential to all sea life, than any other ocean region on Earth.

The discovery is the result of an oceanographic expedition called ICESCAPE, or Impacts of Climate on EcoSystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment. The NASA-sponsored mission explored the seas along Alaska’s western and northern coasts onboard a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker during the summers of 2010 and 2011. The finding reveals a new consequence of the Arctic’s warming climate and provides an important clue to understanding the impacts of a changing climate and environment on the Arctic Ocean and its ecology.

13 thoughts on “NASA: Massive Plankton Bloom under Thinning Ice”


  1. I enjoyed Steve Goddard’s wry comment on this story:

    “That makes sense. When Columbus arrived in America for the first time, he was shocked by how much it had changed since the last time he was there.”


    1. Steve Goddard has absolutely no credibility to comment on the validity of these findings.


    2. Hi Dave,

      In Europe we are not so familiar with the names of, or fixated on the comments from, unqualified climate deniers. So I had to look up Steve Goddard to see who he was…. and I found this:

      “Goddard now runs his own blog. Considering that he was too ignorant even for the exceptionally low standards at WUWT, not surprisingly, very few people actually read it…. [even] Watts had to apologize for the utter stupidity of one of Goddard’s articles.”

      Strong credentials!

      Is this the same guy?


      1. Steven Goddard is an alias name. The real name of this spoofer is unknown.

        I went on his “Real Science” blog site three times. Every time I debunked another of his homemade graphs as flawed. Boring. Yawn!


        1. Are you sure its Steve’s “homemade graphs” that annoy you, Charles?

          Or are you annoyed when he takes graphs from other sources, like NASA, and juxtaposes them to illustrate how the data has been tortured, like this:
          http://tinyurl.com/NASArevT

          and this:
          http://tinyurl.com/IcelandRevT

          Very much like ClimateCrocks, but from the opposite point of view, Steve’s blog is commentary. He does not pretend to present the kind of careful, dispassionate, rigorous science that you’ll find on WattsUpWithThat.

          Very roughly, Steve’s blog is to ClimateCrocks as WattsUpWithThat is to RealClimate.

          Or, if you prefer, Steve’s blog is to WUWT as ClimateCrocks is to RC.

          Note, however, that Steve’s old RealScience blog site got hijacked. I don’t know the circumstances, but the guy who runs it now is not Steve, and is not sane. That might have caused some confusion. Steve’s new blog is stevengoddard(dot)wordpress(dot)com


          1. “guy who runs it now is not Steve, and is not sane”

            unsurprisingly, no one noticed the change.


    1. I just clicked “thumbs up” on a Martin Lack post!

      Pardon me while I go check my temperature.

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