"Researchers study how microscopic organisms, key to carbon sequestration, evolve in the ocean, and implications for a warming planet."

"Averaging a life span of just a few days, 30 million marine microbes would fit in a shot glass, 100 in the width of a human hair. These organisms are tiny – just a single cell – but powerful when it comes to sequestering carbon dioxide.

Marine microbes comprise more than 98 percent of ocean biomass: microalgae, bacteria, archaea, protozoa fungi, and viruses. Together, marine microbes account for almost half of all photosynthesis on Earth: sunlight and carbon dioxide in – glucose and oxygen out.

Microbes are the engines that drive marine carbon cycling, regulating the climate as far as how much CO2 is sequestered in the planet’s oceans."

Devi Lockwood reports for Yale Climate Connections September 27, 2018. [2]