How Climate Change Affect the Oceans

How Climate Change Affects Oceans
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The oceans are an essential part of the ecosystem. It is home to several marine animals and plants. The United States Environmental Protection asserts that 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans, making them have a two-way relationship with weather and climate. Oceans significantly influence weather globally, regulating temperatures by absorbing excess heat for the sun. According to a 2018 article written by Jessica Pink and published in conservation.org, the world would have been made uninhabitable by global warming if it were not for oceans. The oceans have absorbed around 90% of the heat responsible for global warming due to human activities since the 1970s. Pink (2018) notes that the absorbed heat would have increased the average global temperatures to almost 56 degrees Celsius. However, the mass water bodies have limits on the amount of heat they can absorb. Reaching and surpassing these limits affects living things in the ocean, leading to rising sea levels, melting polar ice, altering the ocean’s current patterns, coastal flooding, and changing ocean acidity.
High temperatures are catastrophic for marine life. Climate change is characterized by high temperatures due to the destruction of the ozone layer by the green gases emitted from various human activities like industrialization. In turn, this raises the temperature of the ocean water, increasing water temperatures that affect the coral reef ecosystem. Destruction of the coral reef ecosystem provides a home and food for various marine life, including fish. The aquatic animals feeling the effects of the heat and destruction of the coral reefs are likely to migrate in search of better conditions. A conservation International Research article published by Olivia DeSmit (2019) showed that climate change is warming up the ocean water, increasing water temperature, and affecting the lives of tuna. The tuna move significantly towards the east of the Pacific Islands, negatively affecting the economies of Pacific islands like Cook islands and Fiji reacting to the warmer water. This means that other economic sectors that depend on oceans are significantly affected.
Climate change threatens ocean water levels. This happens in two ways. The first is when glaciers melt, and the water flows into oceans, increasing the sea levels. Secondly, the rising temperatures heat water which expands and occupy more space, subsequently increasing the seawater levels. Current statistics show that there has been a constant rise in the world’s ocean level of six-tenths an inch each decade since 1880, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This has increased to more than an inch per decade in recent years. EPA notes that the seawater level rise is not uniform across the globe, with the US coastline along the Mid Atlantic coast and parts of the Gulf coast experiencing the most rise. Several stations along these regions have more than 8 inches rise since between 1960 and 2022. However, the ocean water level has slightly reduced along the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
The rise in water sea level affects wildlife and human bein...