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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: 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.