This would trigger extinctions that would reshape ocean life for several more centuries as temperatures continue to climb.īut even in the better case scenarios, the world is still set to lose a significant chunk of its marine life. Truly catastrophic extinction levels may be reached should the world emit planet-heating gases in an unrestrained way, leading to more than 4C of average warming above pre-industrial times by the end of this century, the research found. There are two vastly different oceans we could be seeing, one devoid of a lot of life we see today, depending on what we see with CO2 emissions moving forward.”
“The future of life in the oceans rests strongly on what we decide to do with greenhouse gases today. “Even if the magnitude of species loss is not the same level as this, the mechanism of the species loss would be the same,” said Justin Penn, a climate scientist at Princeton University who co-authored the new research. This cataclysm, known as the “great dying”, led to the demise of up to 96% of the planet’s marine animals. The pressures of rising heat and loss of oxygen are, researchers said, uncomfortably reminiscent of the mass extinction event that occurred at the end of the Permian period about 250m years ago.
Aquatic creatures such as clams, mussels and shrimp are unable to properly form shells due to the acidification of seawater.Īll of this means the planet could slip into a “mass extinction rivaling those in Earth’s past”, states the new research, published in Science. This means the oceans are overheated, increasingly gasping for breath – the volume of ocean waters completely depleted of oxygen has quadrupled since the 1960s – and becoming more hostile to life.
The world’s seawater is steadily climbing in temperature due to the extra heat produced from the burning of fossil fuels, while oxygen levels in the ocean are plunging and the water is acidifying from the soaking up of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
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