Halocarbon emissions from marine phytoplankton and climate change

Long-lived and short-lived halocarbons have long been known for their adverse effects on atmospheric chemistry, especially ozone depletion that may be directly or indirectly influenced by global climate change. Marine organisms including phytoplankton contribute shorter-lived halocarbon compounds to the atmosphere. Oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface making the marine phytoplankton a significant presence. Changes in the environment will inevitably affect this widely distributed group of organisms. Various predictions have been made about how phytoplankton will respond to climate change, but as yet little is known about the interactions between phytoplankton, climate change and halocarbon emissions. We provide a summary of studies on halocarbon emissions by marine phytoplankton isolated from different climatic zones that includes data from our recent studies on tropical marine phytoplankton. It is important to determine and characterize the contribution of the phytoplankton to the halocarbon load in the atmosphere to allow their interaction with the changing global climate to be understood. Using these data, we compare the range of halocarbons emitted by phytoplankton with halocarbon emission data for seaweeds, a well-known biogenic contributor of short-lived halocarbons. Sørensen’s coefficient of similarity of 0.50 was calculated, which suggests that half of the detected halocarbon species present in seaweeds are also present in phytoplankton.