Spring Greening

Spring Greening

Fri November 4th, 2011
Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

Imge: European Space AgencyIn findings published online in Geophysical Research Letters this week, Prof. Raf Ferrari and former PAOC postdoc, now a lecturer in oceanography at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., John Taylor, have identified where phytoplankton blooms are most likely to start. Using numerical simulation, the pair found that ocean fronts, boundaries between cold and warm currents, where warm water slides over cold dense water, create a particularly hospitable environment for microorganisms, explaining why the ocean does not turn green everywhere at once, but rather develops green streaks that preferentially track fronts. 

Read more in this MIT News story.