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Oceans Could Soon Not Have Enough Oxygen To Support Marine Life (iflscience.com)

An anonymous reader writes: As the climate continues to change in response to the increasing amount of carbon humans pump into the atmosphere, the oceans are being particularly hard hit from melting Arctic sea ice, acidification, and warming surface temperatures. Yet those are not the only difficulties that marine life has to deal with, as a new study reports that the oceans are also losing oxygen. As the majority of marine life relies on the oxygen dissolved in the oceans, it is worrying that noticeable differences have been observed in the gas concentrations in the world's waters. The reduction in oxygen will have profound effects on ocean biodiversity, though as the study published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles shows, not all regions will be affected in the same way or over the same period of time."Loss of oxygen in the ocean is one of the serious side effects of a warming atmosphere, and a major threat to marine life," said lead author Matthew Long of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it's been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change. This new study tells us when we can expect the impact from climate change to overwhelm the natural variability."

3 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Polar ice caps melting faster than expected by Layzej · · Score: 4, Informative

    They were wrong about the ice caps melting,

    The arctic ice cap is melting much faster than predicted: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicen...

  2. No. Might in 2030 have detectable decrease by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Look at the paper. It doesn't say that oxygen is decreasing to dangerous levels. It says that computers think that by 2030 it might be possible to measure a certain decrease in oxygen in certain places. The change is too small to measure at present, if that change is happening.

  3. Re:Some perspective here... by dywolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    odd that you missed the point even though you specifically stated it:water holds less dissolved oxygen as it gets warmer.
    the ocean is getting warmer. O2 content is measurably going down, even without the effects if El Nino. phytoplankton oxygen production is completely irrelevant to that discussion.

    and yes the ocean is currently alkaline, but that doesn't mean it's not acidifying. acidifying != acidic. to be acidic pH needs to be below 7, but to be acidifying it merely needs to be moving from a higher pH to a lower pH, which it is measurably doing.

    your post is meaningless deflection, and certainly not insightful.

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