And since 70% of the planet is covered by clear blue water, anything that reduces the oceans’ capacity to soak up and sequester carbon could only make climate change more certain and more swift.
It is a process that engineers call “positive feedback”. And under such a cycle of feedback, the world will continue to get even warmer, accelerating the process yet again.
Many such studies are, in essence, computer simulations. But Chris Marsay − a marine biochemist at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre in Southampton − and colleagues based their results on experiments at sea.
Sediment traps
They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they examined sediment traps in the North Atlantic to work out what happens to organic carbon – the tissue of the living things that exploit photosynthesis, directly or indirectly, to convert carbon dioxide – as it sinks to the depths.
Sooner or later, much of this stuff gets released into the sea water as carbon dioxide. This is sometimes called the ocean’s biological carbon pump. In deep, cold waters, the process is slow. In warmer, shallower waters, it accelerates.
And as there is evidence that the ocean is responding to atmospheric changes in temperature, both at the surface and at depth, the study suggests that “predicted future increases in ocean temperatures will result in reduced CO2 storage by the oceans”.
Read more at Ocean Warming Speeds Up Cycle of Climate Change
No comments:
Post a Comment