NASA: Massive Plankton Bloom under Thinning Ice
June 7, 2012
Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. A NASA-sponsored expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice to find waters richer in microscopic marine plants, essential to all sea life, than any other ocean region on Earth.
The discovery is the result of an oceanographic expedition called ICESCAPE, or Impacts of Climate on EcoSystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment. The NASA-sponsored mission explored the seas along Alaska’s western and northern coasts onboard a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker during the summers of 2010 and 2011. The finding reveals a new consequence of the Arctic’s warming climate and provides an important clue to understanding the impacts of a changing climate and environment on the Arctic Ocean and its ecology.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
June 8, 2012 at 1:01 am
I enjoyed Steve Goddard’s wry comment on this story:
“That makes sense. When Columbus arrived in America for the first time, he was shocked by how much it had changed since the last time he was there.”
June 8, 2012 at 2:50 am
Steve Goddard has absolutely no credibility to comment on the validity of these findings.
June 8, 2012 at 7:19 am
Hi Dave,
In Europe we are not so familiar with the names of, or fixated on the comments from, unqualified climate deniers. So I had to look up Steve Goddard to see who he was…. and I found this:
“Goddard now runs his own blog. Considering that he was too ignorant even for the exceptionally low standards at WUWT, not surprisingly, very few people actually read it…. [even] Watts had to apologize for the utter stupidity of one of Goddard’s articles.”
Strong credentials!
Is this the same guy?
June 8, 2012 at 9:05 am
Steve Goddard’s fact compass reliably points to magnetic south.
June 8, 2012 at 10:51 pm
Steven Goddard is an alias name. The real name of this spoofer is unknown.
I went on his “Real Science” blog site three times. Every time I debunked another of his homemade graphs as flawed. Boring. Yawn!
June 9, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Are you sure its Steve’s “homemade graphs” that annoy you, Charles?
Or are you annoyed when he takes graphs from other sources, like NASA, and juxtaposes them to illustrate how the data has been tortured, like this:
http://tinyurl.com/NASArevT
and this:
http://tinyurl.com/IcelandRevT
Very much like ClimateCrocks, but from the opposite point of view, Steve’s blog is commentary. He does not pretend to present the kind of careful, dispassionate, rigorous science that you’ll find on WattsUpWithThat.
Very roughly, Steve’s blog is to ClimateCrocks as WattsUpWithThat is to RealClimate.
Or, if you prefer, Steve’s blog is to WUWT as ClimateCrocks is to RC.
Note, however, that Steve’s old RealScience blog site got hijacked. I don’t know the circumstances, but the guy who runs it now is not Steve, and is not sane. That might have caused some confusion. Steve’s new blog is stevengoddard(dot)wordpress(dot)com
June 10, 2012 at 12:24 am
“guy who runs it now is not Steve, and is not sane”
unsurprisingly, no one noticed the change.
June 8, 2012 at 5:32 am
https://climatecrocks.com/2011/09/14/new-lows-sea-ice-and-steven-goddard-credibility/
Nice to see daveburton consistently off base. Old Faithful.
June 8, 2012 at 9:23 am
Given the fact that ice is not opaque (i.e. it is translucent) and that water at zero Celsius is capable of holding twice as much CO2 than it is at 20 Celsius, is it really that surprising to find plankton blooms in cold sunlit water containing very few pelagic fish?
June 9, 2012 at 6:30 pm
I just clicked “thumbs up” on a Martin Lack post!
Pardon me while I go check my temperature.
June 9, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Moi aussi, est-il contagieux?
June 11, 2012 at 12:49 am
I didn’t know that Columbus discovered the Arctic!
June 12, 2012 at 9:02 am
[…] CCP: Doug O’Harra: Phytoplankton explosion beneath Chukchi Sea ice intrigues scientists2012/06/07: PSinclair: NASA: Massive Plankton Bloom under Thinning Ice2012/06/07: NatureN: Huge phytoplankton bloom found under Arctic ice2012/06/09: CIP: Phytoplankton […]