SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A large research synthesis, published in one of the world's most influential scientific journals, has detected a decline in the amount of dissolved oxygen in oceans around the world — a long-predicted result of climate change that could have severe consequences for marine organisms if it continues.
The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Nature by oceanographer Sunke Schmidtko and two colleagues from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, found a decline of more than 2 percent in ocean oxygen content worldwide between 1960 and 2010.
The loss of ocean oxygen "has been assumed from models, and there have been lots of regional analysis that have shown local decline, but it has never been shown on the global scale, and never for the deep ocean," said Schmidtko, who conducted the research with Lothar Stramma and Martin Visbeck, also of GEOMAR.
Because oxygen in the global ocean is not evenly distributed, the 2 percent overall decline means there is a much larger decline in some areas of the ocean than others.
Moreover, the ocean already contains so-called oxygen minimum zones, generally found in the middle depths. The great fear is that their expansion upward, into habitats where fish and other organism thrive, will reduce the available habitat for marine organisms.
In shallower waters, meanwhile, the development of ocean "hypoxic" areas, or so-called "dead zones," may also be influenced in part by declining oxygen content overall.
On top of all of that, declining ocean oxygen can also worsen global warming in a feedback loop. In or near low oxygen areas of the oceans, microorganisms tend to produce nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Thus the new study "implies that production rates and efflux to the atmosphere of nitrous oxide ... will probably have increased."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17 2017, @06:22PM
The 2015 record cold weather was a sign of global warming.
Record hot weather is a sign of global warming.
If hot, and cold is a sign of global warming...what exactly wouldn't be?
The words you're looking for are "extreme weather". Increased swings between record cold and hot weather indicate that the climate is getting more UNSTABLE. You know, like things swing left and right before toppling over.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 18 2017, @07:59AM
Increased swings between record cold and hot weather indicate
Where's the evidence for "increased swings"? Confirmation and observation bias are not evidence.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 18 2017, @09:50AM
So what would you accept as evidence for increased swings?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 18 2017, @02:01PM
So what would you accept as evidence for increased swings?
I don't play that game. I want to see evidence far in excess of what I would accept.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 18 2017, @04:42PM
Ah, thank you for confirming, in words that could not be clearer, that you are holding an irrational belief and are not interested in rational discourse.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 18 2017, @11:46PM
Ah, thank you for confirming, in words that could not be clearer, that you are holding an irrational belief and are not interested in rational discourse.
To the contrary, it's quite rational. We're in an adversarial situation like a courtroom where most parties are making arguments to support particular viewpoints or interests. By not explicitly given a criteria for which I can be convinced, I'm forcing the other side to provide a preponderance of evidence, not merely the minimum necessary. That reduces the benefits from exaggerating or distorting research.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 19 2017, @11:14AM
There are good reasons why lawyers are widely regarded as bad people. Think about it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 19 2017, @04:11PM
There are good reasons why lawyers are widely regarded as bad people. Think about it.
That ship sailed long ago. The debate is fundamentally adversarial now no matter what people think of lawyers.
I don't want to discuss my hypothetical level of acceptance of imaginary evidence. I want to discuss evidence that actually exists. Let us recall your earlier comment:
The words you're looking for are "extreme weather". Increased swings between record cold and hot weather indicate that the climate is getting more UNSTABLE. You know, like things swing left and right before toppling over.
That was completely unsupported by actual evidence. As butthurt noted [soylentnews.org], there is some evidence that extreme warming events are becoming somewhat more common as one would expect in a global warming situation. But there hasn't been an corresponding statistical increase in extreme cooling events to go with it.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday February 18 2017, @07:25PM
I searched Google News for "north pole" as a phrase and for "extreme" together with "temperature."
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=nws&q=%22north+pole%22 [google.com]
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=nws&q=extreme+temperature [google.com]
A 10 February story stated:
Friday's temperatures very near the North Pole are about 50 degrees warmer than normal, according to a temperature analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
-- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/02/10/its-about-50-degrees-warmer-than-normal-near-the-north-pole/ [washingtonpost.com]
A few days earlier, the paper had predicted:
For the fourth time in just over a year, the North Pole may near the melting point in winter, a previously rare event.
-- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/02/06/massive-hurricane-force-atlantic-storm-to-push-abnormally-mild-air-towards-north-pole/ [washingtonpost.com]
A blogger says of the same event:
It's the third heatwave this winter. In the past, Arctic heatwaves have been recorded once or twice per decade. The Arctic was missing a staggering area of sea ice in January. It's a record-breaking area, equivalent to roughly two times the size of France.
-- http://www.malibutimes.com/blogs/article_50877d82-f563-11e6-a2d2-6bfd1a973594.html [malibutimes.com] or http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/heatwaves-australia-to-the-north-pole_us_58a4fa79e4b026a89a7a264b [huffingtonpost.com]
He links to a Nature article which says a
[...] change in the upper-atmospheric circulation has been linked to more extreme mid-latitude weather including cold air outbreaks that are associated with the southward extension of the polar vortex. There is however considerable debate concerning this linkage.
[...]
[...] We will also show that these midwinter warming events occur once or twice each decade with an event in 2014 as well as one in 1959. The identification of events prior to 1959 is hampered by the lack of a comprehensive upper-air observing network prior to this time22. In addition, the warmest midwinter surface air temperatures at the pole are increasing at a rate that is twice as high as that for the mean midwinter surface air temperatures indicating that these events may become more common in the future.
-- http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39084 [nature.com]
The blogger quotes Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales regarding unusually high summertime temperatures in Australia:
"Usually you would only get this kind of extreme heat if it was an El Nino summer. The most recent El Nino phenomenon ended in mid 2016."
Inside Climate News interviewed her, too:
Based on records going back to the late 1800s, there's no question that heatwaves have become more frequent, with some regional nuances, Perkins-Kirkpatrick said.
"In Canberra, Australia's capital, the number of heat wave days has doubled in the past 60 years. In that same time, the beginning of the heatwave season in Sydney has advanced by three weeks, and in Melbourne, heatwaves are hotter," she said.
-- https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13022017/australia-heatwave-climate-change-sydney-melbourne [insideclimatenews.org]
In Oklahoma, it's winter:
The Northern Hemisphere is in the depths of winter at the moment, with February usually the coldest month for the United States.
But over the weekend, the city of Mangum, Oklahoma, hit temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) - way above the average February high of 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius) for the region.
[...]
[...] these types of extreme weather events - both hot and cold - are becoming far more common around the world.
[...]
The coverage of the polar ice cap is also at a record low for January out of the 38 years that the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre has been collecting satellite data.
When researchers compare January this year to last year, the North Pole has lost a Wyoming-sized area of ice.
"I've been looking at Arctic weather and climate for 35 years and I've never seen anything like the warming conditions we've been seeing this winter," director of National Snow and Ice Data Centre, Mark Serreze, told Inside Climate News.
-- https://www.sciencealert.com/oklahoma-hit-temperatures-of-100-fahrenheit-in-the-depths-of-winter [sciencealert.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 19 2017, @12:05AM
The words you're looking for are "extreme weather". Increased swings between record cold and hot weather indicate that the climate is getting more UNSTABLE. You know, like things swing left and right before toppling over.
I believe there is some global warming and it is resulting in an increase in extreme warming events in weather. But we've been looking at weather for a limited period of time. We should expect to see regional warming (and cooling) even in the complete absence of global warming. And it would be possible, as in these news stories to come up with a narrative of regions with elevated levels of warming events even in the complete absence of global warming. That's the power of confirmation bias. It's worth noting here that the IPCC has near completely abandoned concrete claims about extreme weather events coming from global warming.
maxwell demon goes beyond even that to claim that global warming will result in an increase in extreme cooling events in weather globally. I think that's complete bunk. My view is that global warming is slow. So there will continue to be normal extreme cooling events. But the narrative of an imaginary increase in extreme cooling events is great for assuaging the doubts of the faithful as to why extreme cooling events still happen.
Finally, notice that several of these events are a 1 in few decades event ("The identification of events prior to 1959 is hampered by the lack of a comprehensive upper-air observing network prior to this time"). They have no record for polar regions prior to modern times, so it is currently conjecture to state that the extreme warming events are particularly unusual for the region.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:46AM
> [...] several of these events are a 1 in few decades event [...]
They were happening somewhat more often than that. "They occur once or twice each decade with the earliest identified event taking place in 1959." was what the Nature authors wrote. There was an event in 2014, one in late 2015 that they wrote about, then in November 2016, December 2016 and again this month there were episodes of unusually warm weather in the high Arctic. That looks to me like an increasing frequency of such events.
I believe there is some global warming and it is resulting in an increase in extreme warming events in weather.
That's probably all that's supportable from what I found in my brief foray into the last couple of weeks' news. I would also expect changes in precipitation, because warm air can hold more moisture. In this topic there were some posts about an unusually cold winter in 2014 in North America that might have been connected to global warming. I don't have evidence of an increasing frequency of extreme cold.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:58AM
There was an event in 2014, one in late 2015 that they wrote about, then in November 2016, December 2016 and again this month there were episodes of unusually warm weather in the high Arctic.
Or one event happening over a two year period.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @12:34AM
Because something happening for 2 years is now less extreme than something that usually happens over a week?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 20 2017, @09:11AM
Because something happening for 2 years is now less extreme than something that usually happens over a week?
Depends on how often it happens for two years. We need to keep in mind yet again, that we don't have a long record here in which to determine how unusual the current weather is.