Ireland leads study on global warming

SCIENTISTS from the National University of Ireland, Galway, are leading one of the world’s largest studies into how microscopic marine plants might affect the earth’s climate, it emerged yesterday.

The project aims to find out how dense blooms of tiny plankton in the ocean might enrich bursting bubbles at the surface with organic matter, leading to more stable clouds above the ocean and decreasing global warming.

The Marine Aerosol Production (MAP) project has a total budget of €3 million and is coordinated by Dr Colin O’Dowd from the Environmental Change Institute and Department of Physics at NUI, Galway.