Author: Scientia

Large-scale circulation patterns can be found throughout Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, and play a crucial role in maintaining the stability of regional climates. As the climate warms, researchers find that these patterns are experiencing a fundamental transformation, which can result in catastrophic consequences. According to scientists, these changes could lead to hotter, drier conditions in regions including the Mediterranean, California, and Australia – which are already recording an increase in the frequency and severity of droughts and wildfires.

Dr. Hu Yang at the Alfred Wegener Institute identifies and explains the mechanisms of these changes. His study offers crucial insights into how both human populations and natural ecosystems will be affected by these transformations – and how they will need to adapt to cope with them.

The climate crisis and the chemistry of the oceans are inextricably connected. The oceans have absorbed close to a third of our carbon dioxide emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, leading to an increasingly acidic environment (hence the term, Ocean Acidification) and making it more difficult for organisms such as corals, mollusks, and plankton to form their shells and skeletons.

Mapping future changes in ocean chemistry is the first step in developing mitigation strategies. However, our knowledge of the future state of the oceans relies on mathematical models that are often not calibrated with modern ship-based observations.

Dr. Li-Qing Jiang of the University of Maryland and his collaborators are improving ocean acidification predictions by coupling millions of past and present ocean chemistry measurements with the best model projections at each location of the global ocean.