Climate change is causing our oceans to change color, new research finds

It has the color of the ocean It has changed a lot in the last 20 years And human-caused climate change may be to blame, new research suggests. From one report: More than 56 percent of the world’s oceans have changed color in ways that cannot be explained by natural variability, he said. A group of researchersAccording to a statement by scientists from the National Oceanographic Center in the United Kingdom and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. Tropical oceans, especially near the equator, have become greener over the past two decades, reflecting changes in their ecosystems, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The color of the ocean is derived from the materials found in the upper layers.

For example, a deep blue sea has very little life in it, and the green color means there are ecosystems based on phytoplankton, which are plant-like microbes that contain chlorophyll. Phytoplankton is the base of the food web that supports larger organisms such as krill, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and co-author of the study at the Center for Global Change Science, said it’s unclear exactly how these ecosystems will change. Some areas may have less phytoplankton, others will have more – and it is likely that all parts of the ocean will see changes in the types of phytoplankton present. Ocean ecosystems are finely balanced and any changes in phytoplankton will send ripples up the food chain.