Massive microscopic plants have been found beneath the Arctic Ocean. The reason can be global warming, the scientists have cautioned. The excessive amount of carbon-dioxide has given birth to marine plants three foot under thick and slowly diminishing Arctic ice.
The latest discovery, driven by a Nasa-sponsored expedition team on Thursday, has changed our belief about the icy region of the Arctic. The discovery shows that the growing temperature, changing climate and environment have impacted on the ecology of the Arctic Ocean so much so that even in the freezing waters some plants have developed through 60-mile region and now are extending down as far 90 feet. Now, researchers believe that the Chukchi Sea of the ocean is 10 times more productive than anyone thought before the revelation.
Discovering the microscopic plants, called phytoplankton, in Arctic is "like finding the Amazon rainforest in the middle of the Mojave Desert," said ecstatic Paula Bontempi, NASA's ocean biology program and biochemistry manager in Washington.
"Depth-integrated phytoplankton biomass beneath the ice was extremely high, about four-fold greater than in open water," wrote Stanford University biologist Kevin Arrigo and an international team of 29 co-authors in their brief report published online on Thursday by the journal of Science.
The discovery was part of the expedition called ICESCAPE and was made during a NASA oceanographic expedition in the summers of 2010 and 2011. Researchers explored Beaufort, Chukchi seas, Alaska's western and northern coasts and studied the ocean biology, ecology and biogeochemistry that are changing due to the environmental variability in that region.
The startling findings now are making scientists believe that due to the thinning of Arctic ice, sunlight is now entering the waters under the sea ice and letting plants bloom where there was no life before.
