Changes in biogenic carbon flow in response to sea surface warming

Human-induced climate change is causing a warming of the surface ocean. Due to widely differing temperature sensitivities of key biological processes, this may have profound implications for marine food web interactions and the biogeochemical cycling of key elements such as carbon. Using a novel indoor-mesocosm approach, we show that rising sea surface temperature shifts the balance between photosynthetic production and respiratory consumption of organic carbon in a plankton community. This may weaken the ocean’s capacity to sequester atmospheric CO2, hence providing a positive feedback to anthropogenic climate change.