Floating robots reveal just how much airborne dust fertilises the Southern Ocean – a key climate ‘shock absorber’

Dust storm blowing off the Australian east coast over the South Pacific. Jeff Schmaltz/NASA GSFC, Author provided

The Southern Ocean, a region critical to Earth’s climate, hosts vast blooms of microscopic ocean plants known as phytoplankton. They form the very basis of the Antarctic food web.

Using a fleet of robotic floats, our study published in Nature today reveals that windblown dust delivers enough iron to support a third of the Southern Ocean’s phytoplankton growth. Knowing this will help us understand how global warming will affect key climate processes phytoplankton are involved in.