According to two recent research, climate change will cause chaos on the world’s seas by decreasing the oxygen that fish and other marine life rely on to exist.
Hotter temperatures would cause a scarcity of oxygen in 70 % of the world’s seas by 2080, according to a study released in November by scientists from the American Geophysical Union’s journal Geophysical Research Letters. According to the research, significant deoxygenation of the intermediate ocean levels, where a huge proportion of the fish eaten by humans is located, started in 2021.
According to the study’s calculations, deoxygenation will begin to damage all ocean depths levels by 2080, and it may be irreparable. Even if mankind stopped releasing greenhouse gas emissions and halted global warming by pulling co2 from the atmosphere, it is uncertain if disintegrated oxygen would recover to pre-industrial values. As per experts, this emphasizes the significance of reversing climate change — and the resultant ocean deoxygenation — as soon as feasible.
Warmer seas retain less dissolved oxygen, and water temperatures are increasing at an astounding pace, explaining the decline in oxygen levels in the oceans. Another recent research published this week in the science publication PLOS Climate found that the preponderance of the planet’s surface of the ocean has continually surpassed the usual range since 2014.
The risks of warmer oceans
Warming waters endanger habitats that fish depend on, including corals and kelp forests. The usual temperature ranges were established by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California, who studied 150 years of sea surface temperatures. They discovered that 2014 was the very first year during which the bulk of ocean surface regions reached temperatures that would ordinarily be deemed exceptionally hot by historical norms. Since then, every year has exceeded that milestone, making what was previously exceptional temperatures the new norm.
