Ocean ‘dead zones’ may be permanent

[nosmokes]

What can you say to this? The local rag buried it in the local sextion where the big talk is about the new owners redoing the fancy mall in town! WOOT!The literal heart and lungs of of the planet may be dying from our misguided and irresponsible activities but goddammit,They're sprucing up the mall!Outta my way!

original-registerguard

Ocean ‘dead zones’ may be permanent

By Winston Ross The Register-Guard

Published: February 15, 2008 08:42AM

CORVALLIS — Oregon State University researchers will publish findings today showing that low-oxygen levels recorded for the past six years are unprecedented, which suggests a stronger link to global warming and the potential permanence of the sea life-killing phenomenon than previously known.

Oceanographers combed through records of water samples dating to 1950 and found that last year’s oxygen levels in swaths along the Oregon Coast were the lowest ever recorded — by far.

“This proves how unusual these levels of the last few years are,” said Jack Barth, one of the authors of the study, which will be published in the journal Science today. “We’ve examined more than 50 years of data.”

That data suggests a link to the stronger, more persistent winds that are expected to accompany global warming, the researchers found. The low-oxygen events, or “dead zones,” are caused by a natural process known as “upwelling,” whereby winds push cold, low-oxygen, nutrient-rich water from offshore closer to land, where it replaces warmer water that contains more oxygen in it.

Warmer temperatures on land that would be expected with global warming would pull more air in from the cooler ocean, setting up the winds that create upwelling, and draw the dead zone closer to shore.

After six years in a row, the scientists are theorizing that such a low-oxygen condition, or “hypoxia,” is here to stay.

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complete article here