Tag: Ocean

Climate Change Is Choking The Oceans & Trump’s EPA Will Make It So Much Worse

A dolphin swms in shallow waters by the shore of a beach. (Morguefile)

February 22, 2017

Kit

Climate Change Is Choking The Oceans & Trump’s EPA Will Make It So Much Worse

Posted in Journalism, and Lee Camp

Oxygen. You and I need it, and so do the fish in our planet’s oceans.

Unfortunately for the fish, there’s a little less oxygen in the oceans every year, according to a new study.

Climate scientists have long suspected that a warming planet would lead to the loss of oxygen in the ocean, because cold water can hold more dissolved gas than warm water. In an analysis published last week in Nature, three researchers from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany found that the ocean has lost about 2 percent of its total oxygen since 1960. However, some parts of the ocean are suffering more than others.

New Report Maps Growing Impact Of Ocean Acidification On Marine Life Worldwide

Fish swim around a coral reef. January 8 2013. (Flickr / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service / Jerry Reid)

October 20, 2015

Kit

New Report Maps Growing Impact Of Ocean Acidification On Marine Life Worldwide

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

New research maps the growing impact of ocean acidification and identifies the regions worst affected, while scientists and world governments are collaborating more and sharing ways to slow or reverse its progress.

Fossil fuels and human industry are releasing increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere where it is absorbed by the oceans as carbonic acid, an invisible but highly destructive substance that’s rapidly changing the chemistry of the earth’s waters and disrupting underwater ecosystems in a process called ocean acidification.

The latest effort at mapping ocean acidification comes from research led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and published last week in the science journal “Global Biogeochemical Cycles.” The study tracked the saturation levels of the mineral aragonite, which is crucial to the formation of shells in marine species.