Joe pepe                                                                                                                                 5/21/14

Current Event #2                                                                                                           Earth Science

Iron from Melting Ice Sheets may Help Buffer Global Worming

Works Cited:

European Association of Geochemistry. "Iron from melting ice sheets may help buffer global

warming." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 May 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140521094950.htm>.

Summary:

This article talks about how a newly discovered source of bioavailable iron that is melting from ice sheets could help slow down global warming. It says that this bioavailable iron boosts phytoplankton growth in many of the Earth’s oceans, and that this could help slow down global warming. The article then shows that many researchers from the U.K. and the National Oceanography Centre collected melt water from Greenland that they then discharged and found that the water exiting from underneath the ice sheets contained significant quantities of bioavailable iron. It then goes on to say how iron is on of the most important bio-chemical elements because of its impact on the ocean and its wildlife. The article also shows that the amount of iron from the glacial runoff is 400,000 and 2,500,000 tons per year in Greenland and between 60,000 and 100,000 tons per year in Antartica.

Significance:

            This article is significant because it helps our environment. It shows that this bioavailable iron will help the ecosystems and the organisms living in very cold areas such as Greenland and Antarctica.  The iron helps organisms that live under water, as there is a close relation between the iron and the growth of plankton. It is also important because the bioavailable iron provides a plausible path for nutrient supply to oceanic life.

Critique:

            I had only one of problems with this article. One was that it didn’t explain very well how the iron affects the plankton and how that helps the ocean. The rest of the article was very well written because it had good facts, credible sources, and good quotes from the researches of the experiment.