The research is the first field-based confirmation of such climate impacts.
The research is the first field-based confirmation of such climate impacts.
Computer models reveal how human-driven climate change will dramatically overhaul critical nutrient cycles in the ocean. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of California, Irvine researchers report evidence that marine nutrient cycles – essential for sustaining ocean ecosystems – are changing in unexpected ways as the planet continues to warm.
“Model studies have suggested that when the ocean warms it gets more stratified, which can drain certain parts of the surface ocean of nutrients,” said Adam Martiny, professor of Earth system science and ecology & evolutionary biology and one of the study’s lead authors. Although models suggest a connection between ocean temperatures and surface ocean nutrients, this is the first study to confirm climate change’s impacts on nutrient cycles.
The team, led by graduate student Skylar Gerace, analyzed 50 years of nutrient data from the ocean collected as part of the Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP). They discovered that over the last half century, there’s been a major decline in phosphorus – a nutrient that plays a key role in the health of marine food webs – in southern hemisphere oceans.
Read more at University of California - Irvine
Image: Adam Martiny (middle) participates in ocean shipboard sampling on board the ocean-going Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program. (Credit: Celine Mouginot / UC Irvine)
