Global Warming May Disrupt Four-Fifths of World’s Oceans by 2050 (Study)

Oslo, 08/03/2017 (MAP) – Global warming will disrupt four-fifths of the world’s oceans by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, threatening fish, the main source of food for a billion people, scientists said on Tuesday.

Curbs on man-made emissions, however, would give marine life more time to adapt to warming conditions or for marine life from algae to cod to shift to cooler waters nearer the poles, they said.

“By 2050 around four-fifths of the ocean surface will be affected by ocean acidification and ocean warming,” author Stephanie Henson, of the British National Oceanography Centre in Southampton said.

Cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, in line with goals set by almost 200 nations under a Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, could limit the impact to two-thirds of the ocean by 2050, giving marine life more time to adapt, the scientists said.

Declines in the amount of oxygen in the waters and a reduction in nutrients, both linked to climate change, would add to stresses on the oceans this century, they wrote.