Changing oceans reveal clear human thumbprint

(Climate News Network, 26 Aug 2020) Climate heating must have already begun to result in changing oceans. The next step is to confirm and monitor this change.

Humankind has already begun to reshape the biggest available living space on the planet and to leave its mark in the changing oceans.

New research suggests that somewhere between 20% and 55% of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans now have temperatures and salt levels that should be measurably different because of climate change driven by profligate human combustion of fossil fuels.

And forecasts suggest that by mid-century the scale of human impact will only have increased – to between 40% and 60%. By 2080, human impact on the oceans will have begun to change between 55% and 80% of the blue planet.

Although the researchers – they report in the journal Nature Climate Change – have based their predictions on computer models, they are confident that the thumbprint of human-induced climate change began to leave its mark on the seas of the Southern Hemisphere as long ago as the 1980s.

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Climate News Network, 26 Aug 2020: Changing oceans reveal clear human thumbprint