It seems, the oceans around the world are experiencing the worst effects of climate change. Starting from rising water levels to less CO2 getting soaked up, prove only one thing: global warming and climate change are affecting the seas bigtime.
The researchers from the East Anglia proved this in a 10 year study. The uptake of CO2 by the North Atlantic Ocean has been reduced by half inbetween the mid 1990’s and the 2002 and ’05 season. Since less CO2 is getting soaked up by the oceans, global warming might speed up. One of the researches Andrew Watson mentioned recently,
We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean’s great mass.
This study was conducted with the help of merchant vessels, which had the equipment fitted on them. The equipment measured the amount of Carbon dioxide in the water. One of the ships that sailed between Britain and West Indies made more than 90,000 measurements in the recent years.
The oceans are one of the most important carbon sinks of earth. If the oceans don’t soak up co2, greater volumes of harmful carbon dioxide will remain in the earth’s atmosphere. Due to this, the climate could warm up rapidly. This study will be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in the next month.
Image Credit: AandC
