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Our oceans move vast amounts of water, heat, chemicals and microscopic life around the planet - with one ocean current particularity crucial to life on earth. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning ...
Warmer water cannot contain the same amount of oxygen as cold water. As a result, oxygen from the oceans moves to the atmosphere. Increased thermal stratification may reduce the supply of oxygen from surface waters to deeper waters. This lowers the water's oxygen content even more. [8] The ocean has already lost oxygen throughout its water column.
Life histories connect disparate ecosystems; species that live at the surface during one life history stage may occupy the deep sea, benthos, reefs, or freshwater ecosystems during another. A diversity of fish species utilize the ocean's surface, [119] either as adults or as nursery habitat for eggs and young. In contrast, species floating on ...
Phosphorus forms parts of important life-sustaining molecules that are very common in the biosphere. Phosphorus does enter the atmosphere in very small amounts when the dust is dissolved in rainwater and seaspray but remains mostly on land and in rock and soil minerals. Eighty per cent of the mined phosphorus is used to make fertilizers.
By doing so, the ocean has acted as a buffer, somewhat slowing the rise in atmospheric CO 2 levels. However, this absorption of anthropogenic CO 2 has also caused acidification of the oceans. [8] [10] Climate change, a result of this excess CO 2 in the atmosphere, has increased the temperature of the ocean and atmosphere. [11]
Ocean circulation events cause this process to be variable. For example, during El Nino events there is less deep ocean upwelling, leading to lower outgassing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. [18] Biological processes also lead to ocean-atmosphere carbon exchange. Carbon dioxide equilibrates between the atmosphere and the ocean's surface ...
This deep ocean water circulation is relatively slow and water at the bottom of the ocean can be isolated from the ocean surface and atmosphere for hundreds or even a few thousand years. [113] This circulation has important impacts on the global climate system and on the uptake and redistribution of pollutants and gases such as carbon dioxide ...
The increase of temperature of the oceans goes rather slow, compared to the atmosphere. However, the ocean heat uptake has doubled since 1993 and oceans have absorbed over 90% of the extra heat of the Earth since 1955. [13] The temperature in the ocean, up to approximately 700 meters deep into the ocean, has been rising almost all over the ...