They may be tiny, but phytoplankton and aerosols power pivotal Earth systems. Scientists are about to learn a whole lot more about them at a critical time.
Way up in the sky and sprinkled across the seas, two of the littlest yet most influential things in the world have stubbornly guarded their secrets: aerosols and phytoplankton. Today, NASA launched its Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem mission, or PACE, to unravel their mysteries. The mission’s findings could be a key to understanding how drastically the world is changing as it warms.
Some phytoplankton species also produce toxins that can kill marine mammals like sea lions and accumulate in seafoods like shellfish that we humans eat. With PACE, scientists can get a better idea of whether a given algal species is proliferating in a given phytoplankton bloom, and what conditions precipitated that.