Expanding Oxygen-Minimum Zones in the Tropical Oceans
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration · Kiel Institute for the World Economy · +4 more institutions
Abstract
Oxygen-poor waters occupy large volumes of the intermediate-depth eastern tropical oceans. Oxygen-poor conditions have far-reaching impacts on ecosystems because important mobile macroorganisms avoid or cannot survive in hypoxic zones. Climate models predict declines in oceanic dissolved oxygen produced by global warming. We constructed 50-year time series of dissolved-oxygen concentration for select tropical oceanic regions by augmenting a historical database with recent measurements. These time series reveal vertical expansion of the intermediate-depth low-oxygen zones in the eastern tropical Atlantic and the equatorial Pacific during the past 50 years. The oxygen decrease in the 300- to 700-m layer is 0.09…
Citation impact
- FWCI
- 59.91
- Percentile
- 100%
- References
- 18
Authors
4- LSLothar StrammaCorresponding
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
- GCGregory C. Johnson
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
- JSJanet Sprintall
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
- VMVolker Mohrholz
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Topics & keywords
- Ecosystem
- Oxygen
- Oceanography
- Environmental science
- Oxygen minimum zone
- Tropics
- Climate change
- Tropical climate
- Life below water