According to a new study, global warming may result in a decrease in the burial of organic carbon and a rise in the amount of carbon released back into the atmosphere. This is caused by the potential effect of higher ocean temperatures in boosting the metabolic rates of bacteria.
The world’s oceans were the hottest ever recorded in 2022, indicating the profound and pervasive changes that human-caused emissions have made to the planet’s climate.
Almost all life in the ocean depends on tiny photosynthetic organisms called phytoplankton. These microscopic plant-like organisms collect carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen. Phytoplankton are considered the Earth’s lungs and produce about half of our oxygen.
Tropical cyclones form from clusters of persistent thunderstorms. These thunderstorms draw a great amount of air from the lower levels and vent it high into the atmosphere, leaving less air and lower air pressure at the surface.
Earth’s current largest ocean, the Pacific, covers more than 30% of the planet’s surface, stretching 19,000 kilometers at its widest point between Columbia and the Malay Peninsula. However, this represents only the remnants of the largest ocean in Earth’s history.
The ocean is a very dynamic place. One phenomenon that has stumped researchers for years is how swirls of circular currents multiple kilometers wide, known as eddies or ocean rings, stay intact. Ocean rings are crucially important for transporting heat and nutrients throughout the ocean and can last from a few months to several years.
A team of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego used computer simulations to show that climate change is altering the workings of surface ocean circulations, making them become faster and thinner.
When scientists talk about the stability of the ocean, they refer to how much the different layers of the ocean mix with each other. A recent study analyzed over a million samples and found that, over the past five decades, the stability of the ocean increased at a rate six times faster than expected.
The world experienced record-breaking climate and weather disasters in 2021, from destructive flash floods to heat waves and wildfires. Also, under the surface, ocean temperatures set new heat records in 2021, which are a better indicator of how excess heat is accumulating on the planet.
The Southern Ocean is an important carbon sink, absorbing a large amount of the excess carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
