This is how calcifying plankton contributes to climate change.

An international research project, led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), and published in Science, reveals that the tiny calcifying plankton, plays a crucial role in regulating the Earth's climate through the carbon cycle.

Researchers have concluded that these organisms are oversimplified, or even absent, in current climate measurement models, but if properly estimated, they could lead to the conclusion that the ocean has a greater capacity to respond to climate change, acting as the Earth's silent thermostat.

The study refers specifically to organisms such as coccolithophores, foraminifera and pteropods, which build tiny shells of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), an essential component that influences the chemistry of seawater and facilitates the transfer of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, a process known as the "carbon pump."

Read also: How calcifying plankton contributes to climate change Tiny ocean organisms

"The shells of plankton are tiny, but Together they shape the chemistry of our oceans and the climate of our planet. By leaving them out of climate models, we risk overlooking fundamental processes that determine how the Earth system responds to climate change," explained Patrizia Ziveri, ICREA research professor at ICTA-UAB and lead author of the study, in a statement.

The research also points out that a significant portion of this calcium carbonate dissolves in the upper ocean , a process called shallow dissolution, which is largely absent from mainstream climate models, such as the one known to experts as CMIP6.

For all these reasons, researchers make an urgent call for Better quantify the production, dissolution, and export of calcium carbonate by plankton group, and incorporate these dynamics into climate models to obtain more accurate projections of the planet's future.

The study, in which a dozen authors collaborated with Ziveri, is originally titled “Calcifying Plankton: From Biomineralization to Global Change.”

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