Effects of global environmental change on the surface ocean include increased dissolved carbon dioxide, with implications for the rest of the inorganic carbon-proton-hydroxyl ion system, increased surface ocean temperature with shoaling of the thermocline, and increased subsurface hypoxic zones. These changes will increase the inorganic carbon availability for photosynthesis but decrease the possibility of production and (especially) retention of calcified skeletons, increased mean photosynthetically active and ultraviolet radiation, and decreased availability of phosphorus and of combined nitrogen. The outcomes will probably be increased phytoplankton productivity at high latitudes and a decrease. Further work is needed to determine the effects of the multiple environmental changes on the present genotypes of phytoplankton (acclimation), and on genetic (adaptive) changes to phytoplankton.

Prof Raven is a member of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.  He graduated with a PhD. from Cambridge University and has been a leading researcher plant research, with specific emphasis on algae, for almost 40 years. He is currently the Boyd-Baxter Professor of Biology at Dundee University and a member of staff at the Scottish Crop Research Institute.  In 2005, Prof Raven was the chair of the Ocean acidification Royal Society Report.  His research interests a very broad including climate change, biogeochemical cycles, astrobiology and evolution.

Further reading:
Doney et al. 2009 in Annual Review of Marine Sciences 1: 169-192
Steinacher et al. 2010 in Biogesciuences 7: 979-1005.