Today’s Oceans and a 94M-Year-Old Catastrophe

Today’s Oceans and a 94M-Year-Old Catastrophe

  • April 14, 2018
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Today’s Oceans and a 94M-Year-Old Catastrophe

The ocean is losing its oxygen. Last week, in a sweeping analysis in the journal Science, scientists put it starkly: Over the past 50 years, the volume of the ocean with no oxygen at all has quadrupled, while oxygen-deprived swaths of the open seas have expanded by the size of the European Union.

The culprits are familiar: global warming and pollution. Warmer seawater both holds less oxygen and turbocharges the worldwide consumption of oxygen by microorganisms. Meanwhile, agricultural runoff and sewage drive suffocating algae blooms.

Source: theatlantic.com

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