The ocean is a carbon toilet. Marine heat waves block them.

This story was originally published by Barrier. Subscribe to Grist’s Weekly newsletter here.

The planet will be hotter if not for stools. Throughout the world’s oceans, small organisms known as plant plankton reap the sun’s energy, carbon dioxide and release of oxygen. It is eaten by small animals called animal plankton, which exits the pellets that drown on the sea floor. What is basically a giant toilet, then, wipes carbon on the surface in the depths, where it remains closed from the atmosphere, thus maintaining the amount of carbon dioxide there in the examination.

But with the pumping of humans more than ever in the sky, raising the temperatures of the ocean unabated, the significant signals are flashing that this ascension may change in deep ways. Consider the northeast of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Alaska, where two of the main heat waves of the sea, one from 2013 to 2015 and the other from 2019 to 2020. A new study found that the two events transmitted the formation of plant plankton and glass animals, mainly blocking the toilet and preventing the lower carbon transport.

“These long -term studies help to put everything in the context and also truly implemented the warnings,” said Anya Steiner, a doctoral candidate in biological ocean science at the Skrips Institute of Ocean Sciences, who did not participate in the research. “The ocean changes. It will not only affect the ocean – it will affect life in the ocean. In the end, this will affect this, because we rely on the ocean for the air, we eat, and organize our climate.”

Of course, every part of the world’s oceans has its chemistry, biology and its unique environment, so what happens everywhere. But with these heat symbols, this area of ​​the sea witnessed a decrease in its ability to isolate the gas that heats the planet. This is a risk fraught, given that the oceans capture a quarter of human carbon dioxide emissions. “Although we can generalize that what we have seen here may happen in general through other marine heat waves in the ocean, such as carbon accumulation, it is important to evaluate that regional as well,” said Colin Keel, a microbial designer at the Hakai Institute at the Hakai Institute and the author of participation today in the magazine.

The researchers took advantage of a contract of data from the vibrant ARGOs, which independently wandered up and down in the water column with ocean chemistry readings. When they reach the surface, they lead this data to the satellite. In this way, the scientists obtained a stream of readings for 10 years without having to be constantly on a boat in the Pacific in the northeast of the subcontractor, which is not known as a hospitable winter.

The surrounding heat waves began like those we experience on the ground, with a high temperature of the atmosphere. In fact, the absorption of the ocean 90 percent From the additional heat created by humans. Accordingly, while in the nineteenth century only 2 percent of the ocean surface, seizures of maximum temperatures have seen, this number is Now more than 50 percent. Such events will grow only More and more intense Unless humanity greatly reduces greenhouse gas emissions. As it happens, it was the northern Pacific Ocean again Late records breakThis may be partially due to the regulations in 2020 to reduce the amount of atmosphere caused by ships, which usually cools the planet by reversing the sun’s energy to space.

Like the most air explosions in the atmosphere, wind shortages during the two events made things worse. Usually, after high temperatures in the spring and summer, the winter winds are blowing across the surface, and pushing them along. This forces deeper and cooler water on the race up to fill the void, keep the water column more consistent, and temperature. This did not happen during both thermal waves, the sea remained stagnant, as usually happens later in the year.

Since the warmer water is less dense, it remains on the surface, which creates a kind of cap. “Then in the subsequent spring and summer, this water is warmer, because it has not cools the winter before,” said Mariana Beef, which is subject to marine biogas at Miami University and the newspaper’s author. (BIF conducted the research while he was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Two heating events were not created equally. The first coincided with the phenomenon of Al -Nino – a group of warm water off the coast of South America – which raised temperatures in the northeastern Pacific. The second saw a noticeable decrease in salinity due to the changes in the circulation of the ocean. Because the lower salinity water is less dense, it hangs around the surface, where the salinity is flooded. This increased the promotion of the warm cap.

There is also no dislocation in the winter season that the nutrients that are usually drawn from deeper water have been cut, which denies vegetarian plankton in this cap from the elements they need to grow. Together, high temperatures and low foodstuffs completely changed the environment for living organisms that live and treat carbon there.

That turned the ecosystem. Like plants on Earth, different types of plant plankton need different amounts of nutrients, and in different proportions. “Usually, for example, in areas where you have this wonderful mixing and wonderful nutrients, you have a group of large plant plankton that produces a lot of carbon – a lot of biomass,” said Beef.

As conditions changed during heat waves, it was the most occurring of the types of plant plankton that benefited. These need less nutrients to flourish, so they spread with the decrease in the largest species. Because different types of animal plankton eaten vegetarian plankton differently, the smaller species that ate smaller species were suddenly more. “These men will make a smaller pillar, which would float in water more than a sink,” said Kelge. “So that it can contribute to the decrease in carbon that is transmitted from the surface to the deep ocean.”

Since researchers managed to access this data up and down the water column, they can monitor how all this carbon is drowned during heat waves. Or rather how it was not – because the carbon toilet in the ocean was disrupted. In the first event, carbon molecules accumulated 660 feet, and in the second, between 660 and 1320 feet. In these areas, animal plankton shells continued to chew particles, breaking them into smaller parts that could not sink. In the second sea lane, the increase in small animal plankton in particular means the production of more excessive micro -caramels.

The toilet was not limited to carbon wiping, but more and more waste were added to this water with the rolling waves of heat. This gave bacteria a lot of organic matter of collapse, adding carbon dioxide again to the sea. In the end, the currents of carbon dioxide will bring to the surface, where the gas can be fired again in the air.

Scientists will now have to monitor more thermal waves in other parts of the world’s oceans to see if the same dynamics in play, and the amount of that which may wander in the sea’s ability to isolate carbon. At the same time, plant plankton and animal plankton suffer from crises other than heat, such as ocean acidification that is likely to interfere with some species The ability to grow protective shells.

If there are fewer plant plankton, there will be a lower amount of oxygen that comes out of the oceans, and less foods for animal plankton that feed all other animals in the sea, including whales. “Attention to what is happening at the base of the food network will give us a lot of information,” said štajner.

Fortunately, with thousands of vibrant ARGOs that collect data around the planet, researchers get an integrated image how to change the seas, and vegetable paintings with them. “The oceans are not very broken, and are very sweet,” said Beef. “But they play a major climate role. We cannot understand what we cannot take into account.”

This article was originally appeared in Barrier in https://grist.org/climate/the-ocean-is-a-carbon-toilet- Marine-heat-waves-are-cloging-it/.

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