Key Phytoplankton Species Counts Down 20% In 80 Years; Rate Of Warming 10-30X Faster Than Last Ocean Warming Period

[hatrack]

EDIT

To assess future impacts of warming waters on plankton, Schmidt and her colleagues turned to ancient changes. The team analyzed an extensive fossil record of a type of plankton called foraminifera, which leave behind tiny shells that fall to the seafloor when they die. While many plankton acclimated to the increase in temperature from the height of the last ice age 20,000 years ago to today, plankton will decline in biomass by more than 10 percent if the world warms by 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, researchers found.

It’s a rate of warming that researchers say the plankton simply cannot withstand. “The last deglaciation took several thousand years,” Schmidt said. “The same degree of warming is now happening over 100 years.”

The decline in plankton is already underway. In the second study in Nature, plankton ecologist Sonia Chaabane and her colleagues combed through eight decades’ worth of data on plankton collected with nets, traps and other instruments around the world. Scrutinizing nearly 200,000 samples, the team found the abundance of foraminifera has already dropped by nearly a quarter since the 1940s, with many species migrating away from the equator and deeper in the water column to survive.

“We are not sure that the migration would be enough for them,” Chaabane said. “The change is very, very huge, very fast — and it will continue being fast, we think,” she added. Michal Kucera, a micropaleontologist at the University of Bremen who was not involved in the two papers, noted there are lots of challenges to understanding plankton. Foraminifera, for instance, are only one type of plankton, and the researchers’ methods for collecting them have changed over time. Still, he said the results should be taken seriously. “No matter where and how we look, the plankton of today is already not what it used to be,” he said.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/11/13/plankton-food-study/

[EYESORE 9001]

1. We only get roughly half our breathable oxygen from phytoplankton

So it’s not like it’s a big deal or anything

[poozwah]

2. global warning

this is quite interesting, but not as interesting as what is going on with the real housewives of (pick a location) or the kardasians. (sarc)

[IbogaProject]

3. This !!

The warming is happening much faster than most of the major previous climate shifts. This is way beyond the typical upheaval when 'normal' ice ages start or stop. This is matching most closely to the biggest extinction event in geologic history. If you are up to it, this team of climate scientists have a very informative blog about how dead serious this is becoming. https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/ There is also a retired weather forcaster, Guy On Climate, who focuses on daily impacts, like the forest fires in NY and NJ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event

Permian–Triassic extinction event

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Great Dying" redirects here. For other uses, see Great Dying (disambiguation).

Marine extinction intensity during Phanerozoic%Millions of years ago(H)K–PgTr–JP–TrCapLate DO–S
Plot of extinction intensity (percentage of marine genera that are present in each interval of time but do not exist in the following interval) vs time in the past.[1] Geological periods are annotated (by abbreviation and colour) above. The Permian–Triassic extinction event is the most significant event for marine genera, with just over 50% (according to this source) perishing. (source and image info)

Permian–Triassic boundary at Frazer Beach in New South Wales, with the End Permian extinction event located just above the coal layer[2]
Approximately 251.9 million years ago, the Permian–Triassic (P–T, P–Tr) extinction event (PTME; also known as the Late Permian extinction event,[3] the Latest Permian extinction event,[4] the End-Permian extinction event,[5][6] and colloquially as the Great Dying)[7][8] forms the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, and with them the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras.[9] It is Earth's most severe known extinction event,[10][11] with the extinction of 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species[12][13][14] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species.[15] It is also the greatest known mass extinction of insects.[16] It is the greatest of the "Big Five" mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic.[17] There is evidence for one to three distinct pulses, or phases, of extinction.[15][18]

The scientific consensus is that the main cause of the extinction was the flood basalt volcanic eruptions that created the Siberian Traps,[19] which released sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, resulting in euxinia (oxygen-starved, sulfurous oceans),[20][21] elevating global temperatures,[22][23][24] and acidifying the oceans.[25][26][3] The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide rose from around 400 ppm to 2,500 ppm with approximately 3,900 to 12,000 gigatonnes of carbon being added to the ocean-atmosphere system during this period.[22] Several other contributing factors have been proposed, including the emission of carbon dioxide from the burning of oil and coal deposits ignited by the eruptions;[27][28] emissions of methane from the gasification of methane clathrates;[29] emissions of methane by novel methanogenic microorganisms nourished by minerals dispersed in the eruptions;[30][31][32] longer and more intense El Niño events;[33] and an extraterrestrial impact which created the Araguainha crater and caused seismic release of methane[34][35][36] and the destruction of the ozone layer with increased exposure to solar radiation.[37][38][39]