DECENTRALIZED MEDICINE #27: THE BIOPHYSICS OF THE SOUTHERN OCEAN

The biophysics of the Southern Hemisphere is an interesting topic for those with coupled and uncoupled haplotypes. The story of trees has a lesson for you.

Today I am on day 7 on the journey to Antarctica and 6 days after the Summer solstice here. I'm currently quite close to 41-S latitude in the summer, close to the red pin below. The weather here is much colder than one would expect in the summer than we would see on June 27th at the 41N latitude.

In the United States, the 41 N parallel defines the southernmost border of Wyoming, which borders Utah and Colorado, and is part of the border between Nebraska and Colorado. The difference is that the 41 S latitude surrounds the Southern Ocean. The southern Hemisphere is covered by 80.9% ocean. The Northern Hemisphere is covered by 60.7% ocean. The physics of water and light explains the difference. Because the Southern latitudes have more seawater, water heats up and cools down more slowly than land does. This affects the oceanic heat transfer via the physics of the thermohaline currents.

Thermohaline currents work on water density, which is affected by its deuterium content. These currents refer to the movement of ocean water driven by differences in temperature and salinity, which in turn affect seawater density.

This circulation is responsible for distributing heat and nutrients throughout the world’s oceans and is essential for maintaining a specific climate for a region.

Winds and ocean currents play a significant role in the thermohaline circulation by driving the movement of surface water and climate in a region. This impacts life on land.

When ocean water in the polar regions gets very cold, sea ice forms, and the surrounding seawater becomes saltier, denser, and sinks to the bottom of the ocean as the ice stays on top. The ice is deuterium depleted compared to the seawater.

This physical effect translates directly to photosynthesis in South America and Antarctica. There are collateral effects in Australia. Forests in the Southern Hemisphere have distinct differences that take advantage of this. Chile, Argentina, and Australia have unique beech species called Nothofagus. This extends to NZ as well. NZ has a closely related genus called Lophoozonia and Fuscospora. As a result, Australia is loaded with eucalyptus. In the 19th century, eucalyptus was brought to South America, and it does well on this continent because of the hydrology cycle of lowered deuterium water.

How species respond to the combined effects of lowered temperature and low soil moisture depends on species tolerance, the range of environmental conditions, and extreme temperature and precipitation changes. Low soil moisture in the early summers in the Southern Hemisphere can impact leaf-level photosynthesis through stomatal regulation and nonstomatal processes (Flexas & Medrano, 2002). This is why, at high southern latitudes, the forests are not as dense as they are in North America.

Reduced moisture decreases stomatal conductance, and thus leaf photosynthetic CO2 assimilation due to a reduction of CO2diffusion and thus lower intracellular CO2 concentration in the leaf (Ci) (Gallé & Feller, 2007; Zhou et al., 2014), leading to a possible photo-damage to PSII (Powles, 1984; Epron & Dreyer, 1993). Independently of stomatal closure, biochemical processes will be affected during prolonged soil moisture reduction, thereby limiting leaf-level photosynthesis properties via the downregulation of Rubisco activity and content (Parry, 2002). Hence, impacts of low soil moisture could include a reduction of Asat, Vcmax, Jmax, and Fv/Fm (Zhou et al., 2014; Santos et al., 2018). CO2 from volcanoes at the bottom of the Earth feeds the plants CO2 chronically.

Exposure to chronically lowered air temperature with sufficient soil moisture supply should increase leaf-level photosynthetic properties in the long term because of enhanced photochemical reactions, as long as temperatures do not exceed the photosynthesis optimal temperature. The elevations of the Andes show these effects on plant life throughout Chile and Argentina. The Earth creates mountains and volcanoes to seed the Earth with fuel to grow plants and trees.

The eucalyptus replantation was a success because man used Nature's processes in South America to produce pulp and biofuels.

This is the decentralized science of the biophysics of water and light. Water and light control this process, which affects you via your heteroplasmy rate. This is how light and water sculpt life in the Southern Hemisphere. The process is not the same in both hemispheres. People who are tightly coupled will do terribly at high southern latitudes.