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Hamburg researchers come to the conclusion: The worrying marine heat waves are most likely the result of human activity.
Hamburg – Those who go swimming these days often expect a refreshing cool down. However, when lakes and the like get really warm in summer, bathing is a lot less fun. Can’t imagine what it would feel like if the water were the temperature of a hot shower. However, this is how you can imagine it, the blob. In recent years, the marine heat waves have increasingly made life a proverbial agony for the inhabitants of the oceans.
Previously inexplicable phenomenon Blob: This is how the heat affects sea creatures
Blob, that’s what researchers call the warmed water masses, the temperature of which is well outside the normal range. As spectrum knows, the last blob was observed in 2019-2021 in the northeast Pacific off the west coast of North America. The problem with it: The warm water messes up the ecosystem of the ocean.
Animals that need lower temperatures die or migrate – which in turn torpedoes the food chain. Because the metabolism of the sea creatures, which adapt to the temperatures, accelerates like that mirror 2020 reported. The result is an increased need for food with a simultaneous dwindling “supply”. Seabirds, sea lions or whales often get nothing. According to researchers, between May 2015 and April 2016, one million guillemots, seabirds widespread in the northern hemisphere, starved to death because of overly warm waters. In addition, the blob promotes the growth of algae, which are not only poisonous but also remove oxygen from the sea – an additional fiasco for the sea creatures.
Hamburg researchers are certain: the marine phenomenon Blob is man-made
The following video clearly explains what has happened a total of 31 times since the year 2000 and in dimensions of up to 3,000,000 square kilometers in the Pacific. Similar occurrences have been spectrum according to “also observed in other sea areas such as the South Pacific or the Atlantic in recent years”.
“More frequent and extreme heat waves in the ocean are having a dramatic impact on ecosystems,” says Armineh Barkhordarian from the University of Hamburg, who researched the blob with his team. his, in Nature Communications Earth and Environment According to published results, more than 99 percent of the marine heat waves are caused by man-made global warming.
Due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the water temperature in the Northeast Pacific has increased by about 0.05 degrees annually over the past quarter century. High pressure areas do not allow the ocean to cool down, even in the winter months, but allow for noticeably longer solar radiation. The lack of clouds in the night sky, which in themselves would favor the release of heat, does not compensate for the rise in temperature. “This not only harbors enormous dangers for biodiversity. It can also cause marine ecosystems to cross a threshold beyond which recovery is not possible,” Barkhordarian said. (askl)
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