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Earth Science

Climate Change is Making Our Oceans Change Color, New Research Finds 53

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The color of the ocean has changed significantly over the last 20 years and human-caused climate change is likely responsible, according to a new study. From a report: More than 56% of the world's oceans have changed color to an extent that cannot be explained by natural variability, said a team of researchers, led by scientists from the National Oceanography Center in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, in a statement. Tropical oceans close to the equator in particular have become greener in the past two decades, reflecting changes in their ecosystems, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The color of the ocean is derived from the materials found in its upper layers.

For example, a deep blue sea will have very little life in it, whereas a green color means there are ecosystems there, based on phytoplankton, plant-like microbes which contain chlorophyll. The phytoplankton form the basis of a food web which supports larger organisms such as krill, fish, seabirds and marine mammals. It's not clear exactly how these ecosystems are changing, said study co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Center for Global Change Science. While some areas are likely to have less phytoplankton, others will have more -- and it's likely all parts of the ocean will see changes in the types of phytoplankton present. Ocean ecosystems are finely balanced and any change in the phytoplankton will send ripples across the food chain.
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Climate Change is Making Our Oceans Change Color, New Research Finds More

Climate Change is Making Our Oceans Change Color, New Research Finds

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  • Go check those climate change induced tarballs on the Texas beaches!! I'm sure they add a nice hue to the ocean color.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Q-Hack! ( 37846 )

      The oceans have always been the largest impact on the world's climate. The article does point to this being an increase in algae. I suspect this is a reaction to the amount of CO2 build up in the atmosphere. Color me crazy, but I would consider that a good thing. Nature helping to take care of the problem.

      • My biggest issue is that we don't live long enough to see the real cycles the Earth makes over time. Sure, we have taken some readings in the last couple hundred years but to totally think we know and understand how this Earth works in just a short period of time is insane.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        This may come as a shock to you, but climate scientists are aware that the ocean exists. In fact the ocean has played a central role in climate science for over a hundred years. Up until the late 1950s it was believed that atmospheric and ocean CO2 were in equilibrium, which is why anthropogenic climate change was believed impossible until Roger Revelle's landmark paper which showed that the rate at which oceans can absorb CO2 was limited. In a nutshell -- the oceans can't absorb CO2 fast enough to stop

  • It was such great foresight of scientists to pour billions of gallons of pH indicator into the ocean to monitor for something like this.

    • "monitored changes in ocean color from space by tracking how much green or blue light is reflected from the surface of the sea"

  • Not saying the human race doesn't cause climate change, but the ocean is a really big thing and a very complex system. Maybe there is a couple of other factors besides just climate change?

    Just seems like now a days if anything changes in the environment, then it's climate change!

    • Re:Ocean Color Change = Climate Change (Score:4, Informative)

      by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @10:52AM (#63685747)

      "The color changes matched almost exactly what Dutkiewicz predicted would happen if greenhouse gases were added to the atmosphere"

    • Re: Ocean Color Change = Climate Change (Score:4, Informative)

      by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @10:58AM (#63685769) Homepage

      This. For the past few years *everything* is due to climate change. It's tiresome, facile and incorrect.

      As a recent example, take the Canadian forest fires. Large parts of the forests burned were not forest at all, but plantations of fast-growing pines - which are a lot more flammable than natural, mixed forest. Yet this is almost never mentioned - instead, the news reports beat 1000% on the climate-change drum.

      • Plantation forests are not some new phenomena, they've easily been around and widespread for as long as I have been alive. These fires on the other hand are unprecedented in my life time at least.

      • Technically plantation forest are a mad made phenoma. and it seems like humans are the cause of most of this bad shit going on right now.

      • And these fires would makes things even worse. I do understand your point though but while not technically climate change, producing environments (replacing mostly natural ones) that are prone to accelerate climate changes is not something to be defended. If you know these places are prone to fires (and are shit at biodiversity which do contribute to the issue) then the very least you can do is to go out of your way to protect them.

    • Re:Ocean Color Change = Climate Change (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @11:22AM (#63685855)

      Just seems like now a days if anything changes in the environment, then it's climate change!

      It's not about change itself, it's the rate of change. Sure, summers are hot. But since we've been recording temperatures they haven't been this hot for this long in so short a time, or with temperatures so far out of the norm.

      However, if you can come up with some other reason for the oceans to change color, have at it. Publish your work and let the scientific community have a look.

      • But since we've been recording temperatures they haven't been this hot for this long in so short a time, or with temperatures so far out of the norm.

        Have we actually had accurate enough temperatures readings for a long enough time to make accurate assertions?

          • Accurate in all important points.

            I assume the questioner has yet to reach majority (or puberty, even) to have not noticed the last 20 years of environmental science. Or indeed the preceding 50 years of development of temperature proxies in my field - geological sciences for finding oil/ gas reserves.

            Are people so baldy under-educated allowed to leave school and walk the streets these days? I'd have thought they'd be safer and more useful in one of those nice secure out-of-town facilities which Soylent Cor

            • I assume the questioner has yet to reach majority (or puberty, even) to have not noticed the last 20 years of environmental science. Or indeed the preceding 50 years of development of temperature proxies in my field - geological sciences for finding oil/ gas reserves.

              Are people so baldy under-educated allowed to leave school and walk the streets these days? I'd have thought they'd be safer and more useful in one of those nice secure out-of-town facilities which Soylent Corp is setting up all over. Contribute in a meaningful sense to the "Green revolution".

              You really shouldn't assume much about me based on a question I posted here on Slashdot. I'm actually well educated and long since grew my pubic hairs!
              I asked the question because I *don't* know the answer. However, my gut instinct tells that perhaps 50 years of measurements might not be enough to fully understand the dynamics of a planet that is millions of years old.

              • However, my gut instinct tells that perhaps 50 years of measurements might not be enough to fully understand the dynamics of a planet that is millions of years old.

                Which is why, as geologists, we look at previous comparable examples of such climate change, such as the collapse of the ice sheets at the end of the last ice age and the massive release of CO2 (or methane ; irrelevant distinction at the ~kiloyear resolution of the rock record), to see how rapidly and how much Earth's systems respond to such cha

                • Thank you for that education, RockDoctor. I'm not a geologist so I appreciate learning from others that do. I'm always open to having my mind changed and having more sources of information.

                  Rock on!

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
              I know my response was annoyed and terse, but yes, people need to understand that there has been long study of ice core data and numerous other proxies which give us a pretty good idea (albeit with some error bars) of past conditions. Oddly, some denialists tell us we know it was hotter in the past (maybe 100m years ago) whilst also denying that we can know what it was like a mere 10,000 years ago, which I find odd.

  • Oh noes, we are doomed... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by splitstem ( 10397791 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @11:09AM (#63685821)

    The people that actually can do something for the environment are building bunkers and moving into limestone caves underground so they don't have to deal with the ramifications of their actions. The people that do care have no voice. Protests do nothing, burning down cities do nothing.

    The one thing that can help, nuclear, has had so much propaganda put into stopping it, just because countries don't want another nation to have energy too cheap to meter, so with a fearful movie and some scares, nuclear power was killed and fossil fuels have been used for a generation.

    Honestly, it just means that the politicos and fat cat celebs start hitting harder on us proles to give up what little we have, be it give up our cars, move to overpriced tenements in crime-ridden, filthy cities and away from pretty, quiet suburban areas. From there, we are supposed to "eat ze bugs", be unable to visit outdoor areas, and give up our straws and shopping bags, while they continue to live the high life? All this is, is class warfare and punching down on another war front. Why should I have to bag all my trash into ten separate bag types, only to have the recycling truck drive to the same landfill as the garbage trucks? Show me what actions are meaningful, as opposed to actions which are just feel good, do-nothing garbage.

    What we are seeing with climate change is just the tragedy of the commons at a macroscopic scale, with the well-heeled able to do anything they like with destroying the environment, then punching down and blaming people who can do nothing to help. The problem is that this makes people just not care. Yes, my thermometer shows a hotter temperature this year than last, yes, the wildfires come ever closer, and the haze is bad... but I have as much of an ability to fix that as I do of driving the Russians out of Ukraine.

    Want to know how to fix this? Get more nuclear reactors up and going. China already has a thorium reactor going. However, the anti-nuke lobby is so prevalent that people rather die and face climate-change fueled wars and starvation than use something proven and worked on for 80+ years, which could easily solve problems. Heat? City-wide water chillers and piping systems. Fresh water? Desalination plants. Junk plastic? Thermal depolymerization. Need fuel? Audi has an awesome synthetic gasoline that comes from CO2. All need energy, and nuclear provides that. Until we get on the ball with nuclear, we will just die slowly, and die pointing fingers at each other.

    • People who move into bunkers are eventually killing themselves.

      Machinery breaks down and parts run out (even if you got a skilled maintenance tech on hand), food / meds run out, accidents happen and have no medical services, etc.

      If nuke war or something just as bad happens, I rather be at the blast zone and get vaporised then have it dragged out in a bunker where I die a long drawn out miserable/painful death. Same for extreme climate in the whole world, a quick death is better then a mad max eventuality.

  • If it were possible to reduce the brightness of the Sun by 1-2% we would both, stop the energy increase and at 2% would start a cooling process. To do that we could build a million satellites with 1-2 square meter solar panels, both to power the satellites and to block the solar radiation, set them always to be on the sunny side (we should avoid them on the dark side, otherwise they may actually decrease energy radiation away from Earth. The Sun would dim by 1-2%, this will not be noticeable visually much

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      Better than aerosols maybe, but dimming the sun is not a workable solution since we also need to eat.

      • So which part of 1-2% lower solar input prevents you from eating?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tragedy ( 27079 )

          So which part of 1-2% lower solar input prevents you from eating?

          The part where crops use sunlight to grow and reducing available sunlight reduces crop output. Even if people don't end up starving, the economic damage would be immense. How do you go about compensating every farmer on Earth for reducing the value of their land?

          • I don't compensate anyone for it, this allows them to have crops in the first place because it reverses increase of total energy in the system thus preventing the lands from becoming deserts. Today farmers are losing fields due to lack of rain, entire forests are on fire. Given enough time all of the ice will melt in the Antarctic, many of these same lands will flood with sea water.

            Besides, the satellites are controllable and can be redirected to reflect almost nothing. Blocking 2% of anything doesn't c

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tragedy ( 27079 )

              Maybe, just maybe if such a system could be wished into existence, it could help. Generally though, any system that reverses global warming by blocking sunlight is problematic because we need sunlight. This isn't just like putting on shades because it's too bright out. Of course, actually building the system you're proposing with any currently available methods would necessarily cause far more global warming than it would solve. Also, is there a particularly good reason to build these in space as opposed to

    • You'd need to put your "solar blockers" in the "L1" region (approximately ; it's a fairly extensive volume of space) so that they stay in approximate the right position to exert a dimming effect on Earth's insolation.

      Since each space craft would need a propulsion system, some fuel (or reaction mass ; at low accelerations needed, chemical rocketry may not be the best solution) storage, the optimal unit size would be considerably bigger than 1-2 sq.m. But that's what we have engineers for.

      I think that judic

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BranMan ( 29917 )

        I've been saying this for a couple of years now - but never even got a reply.

        One thing though - the L1 point is really far away - 1.5 million km - so far that light will be passing around the spacecraft / solar shades (pretty much no matter how big they are) so they will never actually cast a shadow on the earth. Heck, the moon is 5 times closer and it only casts a narrow shadow on the Earth.

        So unless you can "open" and "close" your sun shades according to time of day, it will be just a uniform reduction o

        • the L1 point is really far away - 1.5 million km - so far that light will be passing around the spacecraft / solar shades (pretty much no matter how big they are) so they will never actually cast a shadow on the earth

          Doesn't matter ; the intensity of the sunlight reaching the Earth would be reduced.

          To achieve the necessary (approximately) 1~2% decrease in insolation, you'd need around 360,000 sq.km of blocking (reflecting, rather than absorbing) material in the L1 region. Whether you achieve that with 360

    • How would you get the private sector to do that?

  • Wonder if carotenoids exist in marine ecosystems too? They're part of why leaves change color. And would reflect other colors than just green.

    Which happens because only certain wavelengths can be absorbed. The fact chlorophyl absorbs blue and red (2 different molecules), means we see green off it.

    We've added tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which can increase plant growth speeds. So it'd make sense tons of the tiny plants in the ocean might reproduce more than before. Which would slowly change

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