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Oceans
By Emma Ferries
Oceans play a vital role in the earth’s
ecosystem by regulating temperatures,
absorbing minerals, and absorbing carbon
dioxide from the air surrounding us.
Phytoplankton
Phytoplankton on the ocean’s surface produce more
than a quarter of the earth’s oxygen, and by using the
ocean as a place to dump wastes such as sewage
and chemical effluent, we are causing the plankton to
die off.
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The ocean is critical because it provides us with a
great amount of food, but the hole in the earth’s
ozone layer is heating up oceans, causing marine
life to decrease.
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In Antarctica, icebergs are melting, causing sea
levels to rise, and introducing a great amount of
freshwater into the sea. This doesn’t maintain
the balance of salt in the ocean, causing a wipe
out in most marine life that need a regular
amount of salt water in order to survive.
In the ocean, there is so much pollution in the
water that it participates in the cycle of evaporation
into the clouds, resulting in acid rain.
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Food Chain
Due to the fact that sea levels will rise, animals and certain
plants will become extinct, breaking the food chain. For
example, polar bears live on ice, but when the ice melts, they
can’t survive in the glacier water and must be in cold climates
to live, resulting in death, and the fish amounts will grow
because there is one less predator eating them.
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The change of atmosphere that we have
created is causing more CO2 to enter the
ocean than to exit it, creating more acidic
waters for marine life.
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As oceans get warmer from the atmosphere
heating up, hurricanes and typhoons will
become more frequent and damage more
coastal areas.
Dead Zones
Not only is there heating of the
oceans, but low oxygen areas
known as “dead zones”, which in
time could lead to destruction of
ocean life. Dead zones take up
almost 2% of the ocean, but could
take up to 10% of it in the year
2100, but if expecting the worst,
“dead zones” could take up more
than 1/5 of the world’s oceans by
that time.
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Ocean pollution is widespread, and makes up
approx. 35% of global warming, because of the
currents, tides, and winds that make the pollutants
move around constantly.
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References
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Understanding Our Environment - Oxford
Vancouver Sun
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
www.google.com
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/the-globalwarming-hypothesis-and-ocean-heat/
http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/global_warming.
htm
www.pacificviews.org/weblog/archives/002334.html
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OceansGlobalWarming.php
• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/
01/090128-ocean-dead-zones.html