NASA GoddardA plankton bloom off Patagonia. Climate change brings spring and all the events that come with it — like breeding and plankton blooms — earlier than normal.
Rising ocean temperatures are rearranging the biological makeup of our oceans, pushing species towards the poles by 4.4 miles every year, as they chase the climates they can survive in, according to new research.
The study, conducted by a working group of scientists from 17 different institutions, gathered data from seven different countries and found the warming oceans are causing marine species to alter their breeding, feeding, and migration patterns.
Surprisingly, land species are shifting at a rate of less than 0.6 miles a year in comparison, even though land surface temperatures are rising at a much faster rate than those in the ocean.
“In general, the air is warming faster than the ocean because the air has greater capacity to absorb temperature. So we expected to see more rapid response on land than in the ocean. But we sort of found the inverse,” said study researcher Christopher Brown, post-doctoral research fe... Read more
