Decade-long ocean warming that impacts ocean circulation, a decrease in oxygen levels that contributes to changes in salinification and nutrient supply, and ocean acidification are just some of the challenges the world’s oceans are facing.
In a new paper published in Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers have now presented the latest findings from this monitoring effort.
“We show that the surface ocean in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean has warmed by around 1°C over the past 40 years. Furthermore, the salinity of the ocean has increased, and it has lost oxygen,” said author Prof Nicholas Bates, an ocean researcher at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, a unit of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University (ASU) and professor in the School of Ocean Futures at ASU. “In addition, ocean acidity has increased from the 1980s to the 2020s.”
At the BATS monitoring station, ocean surface temperatures have increased by around 0.24°C each decade since the 1980s. Added up, the ocean is around 1°C warmer now than it was 40 years ago. In the last four years, ocean temperatures have also risen more sharply than in the previous decades, the researchers found.
Not only have the monitored waters gotten warmer, but also more saline at the surface, meaning more salt is dissolved in the water. Like surface temperature, this saltiness has disproportionally increased during the last few years, the newest data showed.
2023-12-09 23:41:02
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