what the ocean collapsing means and what ramifications that would have on the environment and on humanity
In: Planetary Science
It is a collapse of the ocean current system, the currents in the oceans move nutrients around the oceans as well as moving a lot of heat around the oceans so they impact on weather as well as where live is in the oceans and how much of it there is.
1. Climate change is making it so that the polar regions are becoming warmer. The way that the oceans work right now is that the water in the cooler regions cycles toward the Equator where it’s warmed and then cycles back toward the poles where it’s cooled again, churning up the water column at the same time so that there’s more oxygen and nutrients available for the life living in it. With the warmer poles, the currents are weakened, making the mix less effective than before.
2. The oceans themselves are becoming warmer, making it more difficult to carry oxygen. In the Antarctic, there’s a family of fish, appropriately called icefish, that don’t have hemoglobin in their blood. Cold water is so efficient at carrying oxygen that these fish don’t need red blood cells to keep their bodies running. But this means that they’re not able to survive in warmer climates. Right now, the Earth’s waters in the warmer areas are becoming so anoxic that they can’t support animals that have become accustomed to certain oxygen levels. A few years back, biologists noticed that starfish had begun to rip themselves apart. It took a lot of research to discover that this was because they were trying to increase their surface area for more oxygen absorption, to disastrous effect.
3. At the same time, the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making it so that more of it is dissolving into the oceans. The CO2 interacts with the H2O, combining the chemicals into bicarbonate, HCO-3, which is an acid, lowering the oceans’ pH. A lot of marine life forms require a certain pH range in order to function and grow. A too acidic environment will cause those functions to fail, potentially making these species go extinct.
Earth has been this warm before, but the heating was much more gradual in the past than it is this time around, making it difficult for most life to adapt to the new conditions. We don’t fully know what life forms are most important to keeping the system running. If one of these keystone species dies out, the entire marine ecosystem will go with it, causing disastrous results on land as well. We’d rather that didn’t happen, which is why there’s so much talk about the collapse of the oceans.
Remember that time you went to the river? Where the water is moving it is clear and fresh but when a part of the river gets cut off it becomes mucky and gross. We call this cut off water stagnant and stagnant water is like a toilet that never flushed, waste goes in but never comes out.
In the middle of the Atlantic there is something special and much like your household toilet it is full of water and always spinning, the gulf stream. The gulf stream cycles the water in the ocean and keeps it full of oxygen. The fish that live in the ocean thrive because the gulf stream is constantly churning nutrients around its ecosystems preventing stagnation.
In fact without the churning of motion water will lose its Oxygen content and fish will die off. Those fish will not be able to distribute their nutrients and the fish that would eat them will go hungry. People who eat those fish will go hungry. If enough fish go hungry it can lead to a die-off and those fish who fight to survive do so in a nutrient poor environment. Remember the dominoes we played with and how one domino knocked down another until the whole row was knocked down? As the little fish die the big fish who eat them die and the people who eat the big fish have to find something else to eat.
Remember how I taught you about tornadoes? How they are made when hot air and cold air collide? The gulf stream is the same way. It is propelled by the collision of warm water from the equator and cold water from the north pole. When the warm water and cold water collide just right the system works but if the cold water overflows the hot water the gulf stream stops and the fish start dying. That’s why preserving the icecaps is so important so we can keep the gulf stream active and the fishes alive.
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