Icebergs, Ocean Currents and Oxygen Levels
Fri Feb 26 2010
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Interesting news story on the CBC website this morning discussing some potential impact of disrupting ocean currents in key locations. From the article:
An iceberg about the size of Luxembourg that struck a glacier off Antarctica and dislodged another massive block of ice could lower the levels of oxygen in the world’s oceans, Australian and French scientists said Friday.
[…] The new iceberg is 78 kilometres long and about 39 kilometres wide and holds roughly the equivalent of a fifth of the world’s annual total water usage, Young told The Associated Press.
Experts are concerned about the effect of the massive displacement of ice on the ice-free water next to the glacier, which is important for ocean currents.
This area of water had been kept clear because of the glacier, said Steve Rintoul, a leading climate expert. With part of the glacier gone, the area could fill with sea ice, which would disrupt the ability for the dense and cold water to sink.
This sinking water is what spills into ocean basins and feeds the global ocean currents with oxygen, Rintoul explained.
As there are only a few areas in the world where this occurs, a slowing of the process would mean less oxygen supplied into the deep currents that feed the oceans.
“There may be regions of the world’s oceans that lose oxygen, and then of course most of the life there will die,” said Mario Hoppema, chemical oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany.
Rintoul also notes in the article that we might gain observations from this event that could be telling in terms of global climate and current models.
