(Hills) – Deep seas have crossed important boundaries that threaten their ability to provide food and oxygen to their surfaces, new research finds.
A survey released Monday in Global Change Biology shows that nearly two-thirds of the ocean violates “safe” levels of acidity, 200 meters, or less than 656 feet, and nearly half of the above.
Steve Widdycombe, director of science at the UK’s Plymouth Marine Research Institute (PML), said that lowering ocean pH is a “time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies.”
The study was funded in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that has largely targeted rapid cuts by the Trump White House due to its role in investigating climate change.
Some of the biggest changes in deep water occur off the coast of western North America, with vast crab and salmon fisheries, research found.
The core issue is one issue that scientists have been warning for a long time. Continuous global combustion of fossil fuels that release coal carbon – acid when dissolved in water makes the oceans and oceans more acidic.
Or technically, they are less basic, so they are not friendly either to species such as corals and clams, which form the basis of the ocean ecosystem.
“Most marine life doesn’t just live on the surface. The water below is home to more different types of plants and animals,” says Helen Findlay, PML’s chief author. “Because these deep waters are changing so much, the effects of ocean acidification can be much worse than we thought.”
Five years ago, Findlay’s research stated that the oceans may have exceeded the major threshold of calcium carbonate levels at the ocean level, a major component of limestone, and the shells of those animals, which have dropped by more than 20% below pre-industrial levels.
In the case of the truth, that shift means that it has passed seven of the important “planetary boundaries” needed to maintain its ecosystem, as discovered by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts, discovered last year.
That shift said Widdicombe at the Marine Research Institute “means witnessing the loss of important habitats on which countless marine species depend.”
“From coral reefs to support tourism to the shellfish industry that maintains coastal communities,” he added.
The further meaning is even more serious. The reason why ocean acids rise or fall to the base is that it absorbs about a third of all carbon dioxide released by surface burning of coal, oil and gas.
However, the more carbon dioxide you absorb, the lower the absorption capacity.
According to NASA, the oceans and oceans that make that dynamic even more dramatic, absorbed 90% of the world’s heating that the surface of the Earth would have experienced.
In addition to heat and carbon dioxide absorption, the ocean also provides 50% of the Earth’s oxygen. This comes from a very marine ecosystem where warming and acidification are threatening.
Ecosystem loss and fossil fuel burning means that subsurface oxygen levels decrease because subsurface oxygen is on the surface.
