Global warming could suffocate the sea

The New Scientist website, on the 25th of January 2009, reports on a study that says large parts of the oceans will become lifeless because of Global Warming.

Fish could vanish from huge stretches of the ocean for tens of thousands of years unless we drastically reduce our carbon emissions.

Gary Shaffer of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues used computer models to analyse the long-term impact of global warming on the oceans, looking up to 100,000 years into the future. This is important because less oxygen dissolves in warmer water, affecting the amount of life the oceans can support.

Under the worst-case scenario, average ocean oxygen levels will fall by up to 40%, and there will be a 20-fold expansion in the area of "dead zones", like those already discovered in the eastern Pacific and northern Indian Ocean, where there is too little oxygen for fish to survive. Even in the mid-range scenario, dead zones would expand by a factor of 3 or 4. Cold, deep waters will also be affected if warming stifles the currents that deliver oxygen to greater depths.