Hard to miss . . . does anyone have the book???
Maybe plankton do not need much sunlight to reach their saturation point. Or it may grow thicker in more direct sunlight, but is itself mitigated by more active fish or some other process.
I don't think whoever made the landmass hypothesis would blatantly ignore ocean plankton. (But I've thought wrong before...)
(edit)But don't think I've missed all of your point. Since, as you say, plankton is x times more CO2 converting than forest, it has more potential to be cause of variation, and it would also take more effort to show that it is NOT a factor in the variation. (end edit)
Anyway, does anyone have the book?? Maybe there's a footnote where the landmass thought came from.
-V
Gardener
The Forsaken Inn
ps. the frequency of "maybe" and "perhaps" shows that I'm no climatologist.
Quote:Hi,True enough, if we're talking overall CO2 conversion. But I was talking mainly about annual variation. Perhaps the conversion performed by plankton is relatively constant throughout the year, compared to large deciduous forests, which basically hibernate a large chunk of the year.
Unfortunately, that is a land centric view. There is a large amount of life, much of it vegetable, in the top 100 feet (35 meters) of the ocean. Just because plankton and krill are not as impressive as redwoods does not say that they are any less efficient at CO2 conversion. Probably, per acre, the small stuff is more efficient given that a much smaller percent of its mass is used only to support the working bits and that this reduction in infrastructure (branches, trunk, twigs) blocks less of the sunlight from getting to the lower levels (a forest on a bright summer day can be pretty dark below the canopy -- I know, I've spent a fair bit of time in them). Given the three to one ratio of water to land, the superiority of the Northern Hemisphere to regulate CO2 becomes even more questionable.
Maybe plankton do not need much sunlight to reach their saturation point. Or it may grow thicker in more direct sunlight, but is itself mitigated by more active fish or some other process.
I don't think whoever made the landmass hypothesis would blatantly ignore ocean plankton. (But I've thought wrong before...)
(edit)But don't think I've missed all of your point. Since, as you say, plankton is x times more CO2 converting than forest, it has more potential to be cause of variation, and it would also take more effort to show that it is NOT a factor in the variation. (end edit)
Anyway, does anyone have the book?? Maybe there's a footnote where the landmass thought came from.
-V
Gardener
The Forsaken Inn
ps. the frequency of "maybe" and "perhaps" shows that I'm no climatologist.