Amazon outflow is found to power ocean capture of carbon dioxide

River nourishes unexpected plant life, trapping greenhouse gas

True-color image of the Amazon outflow, which nourishes plant life thousand of kilometers into the Atlantic Ocean. Click here for more information.

Nutrients washed out of the Amazon River are powering huge amounts of previously unexpected plant life far out to sea, thus trapping atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study. Until now, the areas around the Amazon and other great rivers had been thought to be emitting CO₂, so the study may affect climate scientists' calculations of how the greenhouse gas acts. The study appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.pnas.org/

"This new understanding allows us to better think about how carbon dioxide is cycled between the atmosphere and the oceans, and how this might change in the future," said lead author Ajit Subramaniam, a biological oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Lamont is part of The Earth Institute.