The rapid growth of human civilization is not only contaminating atmosphere but also polluting water bodies. When humans burn fossil fuels, it consumes atmospheric oxygen and releases greenhouse gasses. The presence of greenhouse gasses increases the global temperature and the true fact is not all of the carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere. Almost 40 percent of CO2 gets diluted into ocean water. Oxygen is the most important thing of life for both land and sea creatures.
A team of oceanographers from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research started analyzing ocean water samples from the 1960s. By analyzing over 50 years of ocean water in a row, researchers came to a conclusion that the ocean's net oxygen content has decreased by more than two percent. Their findings first appeared in the journal of Nature.
Lead researcher and the author of the study, Dr. Sunke Schmidtko said in a statement,“Since large fishes, in particular, avoid or do not survive in areas with low oxygen content, these changes can have far-reaching biological consequences ”. According to Phys report, researchers used all historic oxygen data throughout the world for their research. Loss of oxygen was remarkably higher in the North Pacific Ocean.
However Two percent of loss sounds not so much but, on the global scale, it is equivalent to 5 PETA-moles, or 80 billion metric tons, of oxygen. The result of their research is maintaining consistency with most model calculations. Their prediction denotes that consequently higher global temperatures and higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations decrease the level of Oxygen in the Oceans.
Professor Martin Visbeck who was also the part of the research explained that with measurements alone it was impossible to explain all of the causes. Not only in Ocean, climate changes also leave impacts on polar ice caps. Melting ice cap is also the main reason for rising sea level.
