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With the global oceans getting warmer and more acidic as they absorb heat and carbon dioxide, habitats and food webs are changing with them, then there is question on affect of climate on deep sea also arises. So far, the attention has been mostly directed on terrestrial environments and quite recently coastal areas. There are still big gaps, particularly the open ocean and ocean floor ecosystems. Most of the habitable space on earth is not on land. More than 90% of it is in the deep ocean. Over the time we’ve been industrialising, the oceans have absorbed about a third of the carbon dioxide that’s gone into the atmosphere. That has slowed the pace of atmospheric warming to some extent, but it has come with consequences. Carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater to form carbonic acid. With a typical pH ranging between an alkaline 7.8-8.4, this extra acid has pushed the pH of seawater down by 0.1, on average. The oceans have also taken up more than 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, raising temperatures at the surface by 0.1C per decade since at least the 1970s. But some of the heat finds its way much deeper. Seawater at about 700m has warmed by about 0.015C per decade since the 1970s, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Measurements from 700m down to 2,000 metres suggest that section of the ocean has warmed in the last decade or so, too. The amount of oxygen in seawater has dropped in many parts of the global ocean, leading to the expansion of what are known as “oxygen minimum zones.” This is partly because warmer water holds less oxygen, but the main reason is that warming makes ocean layers less inclined to mix, meaning less oxygen is transported from the surface to deeper layers. The deep ocean has a number of features that set it apart from surface and coastal waters. Numerous deep-sea habitats such as seamounts, canyons, hydrothermal vents, and methane seeps are hotspots of biodiversity and biomass, concentrating photosynthetic or chemosynthetic energy and sometimes providing essential commercial resources. Deep sea ecosystems are particularly vulnerable because the species that live there have evolved to survive within very narrow limits. Many of those species we know grow and reproduce slowly, live a long time and have evolved under fairly stable conditions (in ecological time). These would be most vulnerable to change. The potential for damage to ecosystems and species we haven’t even discovered yet is great. The deep ocean contains a high diversity of largely unknown and undescribed species (from microbes to invertebrates)…Almost certainly, the genetic diversity in the ocean holds future solutions to some of the problems we face. Since the deep ocean accumulates heat and carbon dioxide over very long timescales, it’ll be a while before the full effects of climate change are felt. Satellites can get a detailed look at the ocean floor and robots are helping to map and photograph parts of it, but a lot more research is needed, In the deep ocean warming, ocean acidification and ocean deoxygenation, as well as changing food supply are already occurring and we have barely begun to study this. Warming of the seafloor also has the potential to release methane from gas hydrates buried along continental margins, A climate-induced shift in warm currents such as the Gulf Stream may be sufficient to release many gigatons of frozen methane from the seafloor. Oceans were highlighted in the initial UNFCCC document in 1992 but have fallen out of the conversation over next 15 years. This is changing now and there are many voices inserting the ocean back into the conversation, if not the negotiation text. The problem is that most of the deep sea – about 64% – lies beyond national boundaries, which means it’s outside of national jurisdiction. This is one reason states may consider it’s not in their mandate. Another reason is that the United Nations regulates the seafloor, but only in terms of mineral resource permits and fisheries. Despite growing scientific understanding of the impacts of climate change on the deep sea, that knowledge exists in a “policy vacuum”, The International Maritime Organization regulates dumping in international waters, so could they could potentially be responsible for carbon dioxide. There is also treaty called Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdictions being negotiated by the UN that she hopes will address biodiversity in international and deep waters. There is an urgent need for a deep-ocean observation network to improve climate modeling, and evaluate feedbacks between the ocean that can act to speed up or slow down the rate of warming. The ocean’s capacity to absorb heat and carbon dioxide is not indefinite.
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