Imperiling fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and myriad other marine creatures, climate change is sapping the oceans of oxygen, according to a new study that warns of widespread deoxygenation within decades.
Using models and maps, researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, were able to quantify and differentiate between large-scale changes in oxygen in the oceans due to both natural variability and climate change.
They confirmed deoxygenated “dead zones”—which leave marine creatures struggling to breathe—caused by climate change already exist in the southern Indian Ocean and parts of the eastern tropical Pacific and Atlantic basins, and determined that more widespread detection of deoxygenation caused by climate change would be possible between 2030 and 2040.
The findings were funded by the National Science Foundation and published in the American Geophysical Union journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
“Loss of oxygen in the oceans is one of the serious side effects of a warming atmosphere, and a major threat to marine life,” said NCAR scientist Matthew Long, lead author of the study. “Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change. This new study tells us when we can expect the effect from climate change to overwhelm the natural variability.”
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