A team from the national oceanography centre, in Southampton, has suggested that artificially introducing iron dust to the ocean will increase the growth of plankton blooms, which draw down CO_2 from the atmosphere. The dead plankton cells then sink to the ocean floor, trapping the carbon, long term, in the sediments. A German research ship, Polarstern, is on its way to the south Atlantic to release six tonnes of iron sulphate dust into the ocean to study the impacts.
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