Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 350, Issue 6267, Pages 1530-1533Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa9942
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Funding
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Undersea Research Program
- National Geographic Society [7717-04]
- U.S. Department of Energy [DE-AC52-07NA27344]
- NSF [OCE-1061689]
- The Future Ocean, a program - German Research Foundation
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Climate change is predicted to alter marine phytoplankton communities and affect productivity, biogeochemistry, and the efficacy of the biological pump. We reconstructed high-resolution records of changing plankton community composition in the North Pacific Ocean over the past millennium. Amino acid-specific delta C-13 records preserved in long-lived deep-sea corals revealed three major plankton regimes corresponding to Northern Hemisphere climate periods. Non-dinitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria dominated during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950-1250 Common Era) before giving way to a new regime in which eukaryotic microalgae contributed nearly half of all export production during the Little Ice Age (similar to 1400-1850 Common Era). The third regime, unprecedented in the past millennium, began in the industrial era and is characterized by increasing production by dinitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria. This picoplankton community shift may provide a negative feedback to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
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