<
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-climate-begun-suffocate-world-fisheries.html>
"By 2080, around 70% of the world's oceans could be suffocating from a lack of
oxygen as a result of climate change, potentially impacting marine ecosystems
worldwide, according to a new study. The new models find mid-ocean depths that
support many fisheries worldwide are already losing oxygen at unnatural rates
and passed a critical threshold of oxygen loss in 2021.
Oceans carry dissolved oxygen as a gas, and just like land animals, aquatic
animals need that oxygen to breathe. But as the oceans warm due to climate
change, their water can hold less oxygen. Scientists have been tracking the
oceans' steady decline in oxygen for years, but the new study provides new,
pressing reasons to be concerned sooner rather than later.
The new study is the first to use climate models to predict how and when
deoxygenation, which is the reduction of dissolved oxygen content in water,
will occur throughout the world's oceans outside its natural variability.
It finds that significant, potentially irreversible deoxygenation of the
ocean's middle depths that support much of the world's fished species began
occurring in 2021, likely affecting fisheries worldwide. The new models predict
that deoxygenation is expected to begin affecting all zones of the ocean by
2080.
The results were published in the AGU journal
Geophysical Research Letters,
which publishes high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications
spanning all Earth and space sciences.
The ocean's middle depths (from about 200 to 1,000 meters deep), called
mesopelagic zones, will be the first zones to lose significant amounts of
oxygen due to climate change, the new study finds. Globally, the mesopelagic
zone is home to many of the world's commercially fished species, making the new
finding a potential harbinger of economic hardship, seafood shortages and
environmental disruption."
Via Robert Sanscartier.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
