But even though seawater has always differed depending on location, season or currents, scientists say the color of more than half of the world’s oceans is changing — and fast., the ocean’s changing color is yet another warning sign of human-driven climate change, according to a new study that analyzed two decades’ worth of specialized satellite observations.
last week in Nature. “Changes in such a short amount of time are not good because they put the whole ecosystem out of balance.”— and the effects they could have on marine life — in 2019. And even then, she said satellites would “be the sentinels” in determining whether the ocean’s color was shifting.
In the ocean, water can have a brownish tint if it’s loaded with dead leaves and sediments spewing from rivers, she said. In other places, the ocean can showcase a range from deep navy blue to a greener-looking shade — and that’s where phytoplankton come into play. In some places, rising temperatures are changing ocean currents, disrupting the flow of deep-sea nutrients that surface-dwelling phytoplankton need to survive. That lack of nutrition can decrease phytoplankton populations — turning the water bluer. In other areas, Dutkiewicz said the water has taken on a greener tint as phytoplankton populations increase — a boom that can be “too much” for the ecosystem to sustain.
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