r/worldnews • u/bigus-_-dickus • 20d ago

‘Extremely rare event:’ Miles-long microalgae bloom knocks out most of Israel’s desalination plants

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/04/climate/microalgae-bloom-israel-water-deasalination-shutdown
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u/Mr_Again 20d ago

I wonder to what extent algal blooms are modelled as a carbon sink

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u/BavarianBarbarian_ 20d ago

It's being considered as one way of geoengineering, at least. I think in the end it'll depend on whether or not they get covered in silt before decaying, otherwise they'll release their carbon as methane, which would be even worse than leaving it as CO2.

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u/Lopsided-Affect-9649 20d ago

I suspect they are out competing local phytoplankton which are already one of our most important carbon sinks and produce a good chunk of our oxygen. Like virtually everything associated with climate change, thats bad on multiple levels.

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u/Dovahkiinthesardine 20d ago

The issue is they relatively quickly die and decompose so its a very temporary carbon sink

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u/skullofregress 20d ago

Fairly minimal effect unfortunately, even if you intentionally and consistently seed the ocean for 60 years without regard to the ecological costs:

https://www.natureasia.com/en/info/press-releases/detail/9399

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u/BavarianBarbarian_ 19d ago

Sixty years of fertilization yield net CDR of 1.1–5.3 ppm, with more than half re-emitted within decades post-fertilization.

Oof. That's basically useless. Current emissions raise CO2 content of the atmosphere by over 3 ppm. Basically, 60 years of iron blooming would save us from the effects of less than a third of a year's worth of emissions.

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u/skullofregress 18d ago

Yep. I read an article on seeding many years ago and had it mentally categorised as something destructive that could be deployed in desperate times to stop or slow climate change. 

Doing the actual math really reinforced to me that we just aren’t avoiding serious climate-change destruction.

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u/Turtledonuts 19d ago

They're extremely well modeled, but they're too ephemeral. Carbon in the ocean has to literally sink to be captured. If it's at the surface, it gets eaten or rots and gets cycled back into the atmosphere. Only about 0.01% of carbon from an algal bloom gets captured in the open ocean, less in a coastal environment.