The last time Earth’s oceans were this acidic, a six mile-wide sulphur-rich space rock had just smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula, unleashing a deluge of acid rain that exterminated all sea life in the the top 400 meters of the water column. Now, some 65 million years after the Cretaceous extinction, human activity is threatening to similarly decimate the ocean’s ecosystem—this time, from the bottom up. Advertisement How the Oceans Went Out of Whack Under natural conditions, carbon dioxide is continuously transferred between the ocean, atmosphere, and continents in a delicately balanced process known as the carbon cycle. CO2 is pulled from the atmosphere by photosynthetic plants, which form the base of both terrestrial and oceanic food webs. It’ then subsequently sequestered in sediment when those plants—as well as the animals that feed on them—die and decompose. It’s a nice trick and it helps keep us all breathing. Simultaneously, a roughly equivalent amount of carbon enters the atmosphere due to air-sea gas exchanges, as well as the respiration of sedimentary microbes as they decompose dead organic matter. Along with the nitrogen and water cycles, this carbon cycle is one of the primary facilitators of life on Earth, constantly recycling the… Read full this story
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