Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, the destruction of rain forests, etc, leading to predictions of a gradual global warming which will perturb the global biosphere. An important process which counters this trend toward potential climate change is the removal of carbon dioxide from the surface ocean by photosynthesis. This process packages carbon in phytoplankton which enter the food chain or sink into the deep sea. Their ultimate fate is a rain or organic debris out of the surface-mixed layer of the ocean. On a global...

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse' gases are increasing in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, the destruction of rain forests, etc., leading to predictions of a gradual global warming which will perturb the global biosphere. An important process which counters this trend toward potential climate change is the removal of carbon dioxide from the surface ocean by photosynthesis. This process packages carbon in phytoplankton which enter the food chain or sink into the deep sea. Their ultimate fate is a rain' of organic debris out of the surface-mixed layer of the ocean. On a...