Climate change will affect almost every corner of ocean, study says
Source: Los Angeles Times
Climate change will affect almost every corner of ocean, study says
By Tony Barboza
October 15, 2013, 3:55 p.m.
Seawater is heating up and becoming more acidic, but those are only the first in a cascade of changes the world’s oceans are expected to go through by the end of the century as they respond to greenhouse gas emissions, a new study says.
"The entire world's ocean surface" will undergo huge changes in ocean chemistry, habitat and biodiversity by 2100 as a result of climate change, with hundreds of millions of people who depend on the sea suffering as a result, the study predicts.
A team of more than two dozen scientists used projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change along with biological and socioeconomic data to predict how oceans might be altered by the century's end. By then, almost no part of the world’s oceans will be untouched by climate change and a suite of related effects, they found.
Oceans will continue to warm and lower in pH while plankton production and dissolved oxygen levels will decline, the study found. A tiny fraction of the ocean’s surface in polar regions could see increases in oxygen and productivity, but practically nowhere will seawater cool or see its pH increase.
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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ocean-climate-change-effects-century-20131015,0,6711896.story
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