Scientists issue warning over surprising effects of emerging ocean phenomenon: 'Particularly impactful'
What happened?
Seas in the UK have seen a record amount of warming in the past 50 years.
According to the BBC, researchers have projected how 19 threatened marine species are likely to react to this disruption to their native habitats.
Surprisingly, some of these species, including rays and endangered sharks, may see a boon as they move to new habitats in search of cooler waters. However, more static species, such as the clam known as the ocean quahog, will find it much more difficult to adapt to rising temperatures as compared to mobile species.
Even with some species relocating to new areas in the seas, though, the disruption caused by changes in sea temperatures will result in adverse effects for local ecosystems, economies, and food supply chains.
One marine scientist from the Centre told the BBC, "As an island nation, we're hugely reliant on the sea for our food and for jobs. Any changes that we see in our seas are particularly impactful."
Why are rising sea temperatures concerning?
The world's seas absorb nearly 90% of the additional heating caused by human use of dirty energy sources. As temperatures continue to rise, the consequences can be deadly for both marine and human life.
When warmer water forces marine species to move to new habitats because their current ones are too warm for them to survive, it can sometimes cause these species to increase in number, as may be the case with sharks in the UK, but it can also result in these species dying out. Static species unable to move to new locations won't be able to survive.
If deadlier marine life, such as sharks, increasingly moves closer to where humans congregate, it will be more dangerous for both the animals and humans.
Rising sea temperatures also affect humans in a variety of ways. Fewer marine species means less seafood, less need for fishermen, and issues in the food supply chain. Warmer temperatures in the sea increase the risk of extreme weather events, too, which often lead to flooding, damage to property, injuries, and deaths in local communities.
Should we be harnessing the ocean to power our homes?
Absolutely
Leave it be
It depends
I'm not sure
Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.
What's being done about rising sea temperatures?
One significant way to mitigate the damage caused by rising sea temperatures is by reducing carbon pollution. As more people and corporations continue to switch to utilizing renewable energy and reducing their use of plastic, this pollution can be greatly reduced.
Several conservation groups are hard at work managing, protecting, and restoring marine and coastal ecosystems to ensure marine life is more resilient in warmer waters.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Free dinosaur workshop for children at garden centre
Children can explore the world of prehistoric plants and dinosaurs at a free interactive workshop this summer. The event will take place at Dobbies' Cadnam store on August 3, as part of the garden centre's monthly Little Seedlings Club. Aimed at children aged four to 10, the session will introduce young explorers to dinosaurs, ancient plants, and hands-on activities, including making their own fossil to take home. Spaces can be booked at Ayesha Nickson, events programme manager at Dobbies, said: "Our Prehistoric Plants workshop is a very exciting opportunity for children to show and share their love for dinosaurs while learning more about plants. READ MORE: New festive experience to be launched in the New Forest this Christmas "The activities that the children can take part in are a great way to discover and explore the world of prehistoric plants, and the crafts allow the fun to carry on at home." She added that Dobbies is a welcoming space for families to enjoy learning, play, and dining together.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Confirmed: Uranus Really Is Hotter Than It Has Any Right to Be
A new analysis of decades' worth of observations has revealed that Uranus does indeed emit more heat than it receives from the rays of the Sun. This conclusion, arrived at by two independent teams of scientists, finally resolves a puzzle that first emerged when Voyager 2 cruised past the stinky planet all the way back in 1986. Those observations suggested that Uranus was not emitting any excess heat – a finding that put it at odds with all the other giant planets in the Solar System. A team led by planetary scientist Xinyue Wang, formerly of the University of Houston, now at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has now found that Uranus is emitting around 12.5 percent more heat than it receives from the Sun. This is consistent with findings about Uranus made by a team led by planetary physicist Patrick Irwin of the University of Oxford in the UK, made available earlier this year on arXiv. Related: For The First Time, Scientists Have Detected X-Rays Coming Out of Uranus "This means it's still slowly losing leftover heat from its early history, a key piece of the puzzle that helps us understand its origins and how it has changed over time," Wang says. "From a scientific perspective, this study helps us better understand Uranus and other giant planets. For future space exploration, I think it strengthens the case for a mission to Uranus." Previous research has already shown that Voyager 2's flyby occurred at a time when elevated solar activity was making Uranus behave in anomalous ways. It is, therefore, perhaps not surprising to find that other readings made by the probe may have misrepresented the planet's usual state of existence. However, the findings of Wang's team still suggest that something weird is going on with the planet. Jupiter emits 113 percent, Saturn 139 percent, and Neptune 162 percent more heat than they receive from the Sun. Since Neptune is farther from the Sun than Uranus, the distance can't be an explanation for Uranus's lower internal temperature. This suggests that there's still something weird happening inside the giant – whether it's a different internal structure, or something about its evolutionary history. This difference, the researchers say, underscores the need to probe our Solar System's overlooked outer planets. "A future flagship mission to Uranus would provide critical observations to address more unresolved questions of this enigmatic ice giant," they write in their paper. The research has been published in Geophysical Research Letters. Related News Humans Felt The Effects of Weird Space Weather 41,000 Years Ago Strange 'Fossil' World Detected at Fringes of Solar System Fuzzy, Large, And Very Old: Everything We Know About Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
James Webb telescope reveals 'Sleeping Beauty' galaxies in the early universe — snoozing where they weren't supposed to exist
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have discovered over a dozen "dormant" galaxies that paused their star formation within the first billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery, made with data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), illuminates a fascinating phase in the lives of early galaxies and could provide more clues about how galaxies evolve. There are several reasons why galaxies may stop forming new stars. One is the presence of supermassive black holes at their centers. These behemoths emit intense radiation that heats and depletes cold gas, the most important ingredient for star formation. Additionally, larger neighboring galaxies can strip away this cold gas or heat it, leading to a halt in star formation. As a result, these galaxies may remain dormant indefinitely, or become "quenched." Another reason galaxies become inactive is stellar feedback. That's when the gas in the galaxy gets warmed and expelled due to stellar processes like supernovas, intense stellar winds, or the pressure associated with starlight. The galaxy thus goes through a temporary "quiet" period. "This is usually a temporary phase, which usually lasts about 25 million years," Alba Covelo Paz, a doctoral student at the University of Geneva and the lead author of a new study describing the findings, told Live Science in an email. Over millions of years, the gas that was pushed out falls back in, and the warm gas cools again. Once there is enough cold gas again, the galaxy can start forming new stars. While the dormant phase is commonly observed in nearby galaxies, astronomers have found only four dormant galaxies in the first billion years of the universe. Of those, three had masses below a billion solar masses and one had a mass above 10 billion solar masses. The limited observations and scattered properties of dormant galaxies were not sufficient to get a clear picture of early star formation. Related: 'Previously unimaginable': James Webb telescope breaks its own record again, discovering farthest known galaxy in the universe But using JWST's sensitive spectroscopic data, an international team of astronomers discovered 14 dormant galaxies with a wide range of masses in the early universe, showing that dormant galaxies are not limited to low or very high mass ranges. The findings were uploaded to the preprint database arXiv on June 27 and have not been peer-reviewed yet. Taking a breather Researchers didn't expect to see dormant galaxies in the early universe. Because these galaxies are young, they should be vigorously forming many new stars, astronomers thought. But in a 2024 paper, researchers described the first discovery of a dormant galaxy in the early universe. "The first discovery of a dormant galaxy in the early universe was such a shock because that galaxy had been observed before with Hubble, but we could not know it was dormant until JWST," Paz said. That's because, unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, JWST's NIRSpec instrument can both see light from these galaxies that has been redshifted to near-infrared wavelengths, and also provide spectroscopic details about it. Astronomers were curious to know why early galaxies stopped forming stars and whether this was common among a wide range of stellar masses. One hypothesis was that the galaxies had bursts of star formation and then quiet periods, before starting again. Paz and her team looked for the galaxies that were in between bursts of star formation. They used publicly available galaxy data in the DAWN JWST Archive. They examined the light of about 1,600 galaxies, looking for signs of new stars not forming. They also focused on clear signatures of middle-aged or old stars in the galaxies' light. The team found 14 galaxies, ranging from about 40 million to 30 billion solar masses, that had paused star formation. "We now found 14 sources supporting this burstiness process, and we found that all of them have halted star formation between 10 [million] and 25 million years before we observed them," Paz explained. That means these 14 galaxies were found to follow a stop-and-go fashion of star formation rather than continuously forming stars, and they have been quiet for at least 10 million to 25 million years. This relatively short snooze hints that stellar feedback, such as supernovas or stellar winds, caused them to go quiet and that they may eventually restart their stellar factories, Paz said. However, there is still uncertainty, she added. "We cannot confirm it for sure because we don't know how long they will remain dormant, and if they happen to stay dormant for another 50 million years, this would mean the cause of their quenching is different," Paz explained. RELATED STORIES —Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS transforms into a giant 'cosmic rainbow' in trippy new telescope image —'Ice cube' clouds discovered at the galaxy's center shouldn't exist — and they hint at a recent black hole explosion —Behold, 'The Beast': Gigantic animal-like plasma plume 13 times wider than Earth hovers over the sun This scenario would suggest that the galaxies are dead. Nevertheless, the current properties of these galaxies support a cycle of fits and starts. Because dormant galaxies are so rare, much about them remains mysterious. However, astronomers hope future observations will help shed light on these snoozing star factories. An upcoming JWST program called "Sleeping Beauties" will be dedicated to discovering dormant galaxies in the early universe, Paz said. This program will allow astronomers to estimate how long a galaxy remains in this quiet phase and help them understand the bursty star formation process. "There are still many unknowns for us, but we are one step closer to unravelling this process," Paz said.
