Batul Shabbir, Student (Environmental Engineering and Management)
Climate change is an extremely mind-boggling issue that is driving uncountable shifts across the world, especially it has triggered some serious alteration in the structure-function of oceanic ecosystems. The ocean covers up 71% of the Earth, offers numerous types of services to human society from lessening the extreme weather events to generating the oxygen we inhale, from delivering the food we eat to putting away the abundance of the carbon dioxide we produce. The amount of carbon dioxide has risen by 35% since the industrial revolution, mainly from the burning of fossil fuel because of that the carbon sink capacity of the ocean has been surpassed which is weakening the ability of the ocean to provide critical ecosystem services.
Ocean acidity has increased by 30 percent across the past century because of the carbon emissions caused by mankind, which has changed the chemistry of ocean. The ocean additionally shows the brunt of climate change, as proved by changes in currents, and sea-level rise and temperature, all of which influence the well-being of marine species, coastal species, and deep-sea ecosystems. The ocean is experiencing dreadful impacts of climate change and its subsequent consequences include increasing air and water temperature, seasonal shifts in species, coral bleaching, inundation hazards, coastal area erosion, growth of algal blooms, seasonal shifts in species, dead zones, new aquatic diseases, loss of marine mammals and loss of fisheries. Likewise, we can anticipate major intense weather events such as droughts, floods and storms.
In conclusion, climate change has a significant effect on the oceanic ecosystem and overtime concerns regarding climate change increasing we must recognize the inter-relation between the climate change and ocean, and should take a promising step to protect marine ecosystem because ocean climate change have already made Earth uninhabitable.
About the Author: Batul Shabbir is a student of environmental engineering and management at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology.