Salinity research goes undergr바카라ound for better yields
Graphic credit: NASA, NOAA
How much salt may our waterways absorb?
One of the most common questions people ask is how much salt may be trapped in the sediments.
We have not found any evidence that salt levels in the oceans have increased because of anthropogenic climate change — a warming trend that is also known as climate change hiatus.
But scientists have long suspected there might be some environmental stress from an increasing global population, which is expected to cause large swaths o바카라사이트f the planet to become uninhabitable by 2060.
One recent study from NASA, for instance, shows that if global warming continues at current pace, the rate of global land-sea surface warming would increase, contributing even more stress to oceans, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report.
Other studies suggest that, as the climate shifts toward warmer temperatures, sea levels could rise substantially from around the world and into the coastal areas where we live.
Scientists have also suspected that increases in salinity were caused by ocean acidification, which is a process in which ocean water absorbs more water than is lost from the atmosphere when sunlight breaks up sea water into ions and carbon dioxide, according to this paper published in the journal Science.
Sea level rise will cause some communities to be submerged. The problem? The higher the level of salinity, the faster the sediment will be eroded by seawater, says Andrew Stuckler, an ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
«At low salinity we would expect seawater to break out of the seafloor faster,» he said. «And with it going through the ocean floor more quickly then going through the land, that’s more likely to cause large changes in seawater composition.»
Stuckler and his colleagues simulated and estimated ho바카라사이트w salty seawater would be in the ocean if humans continued unabated human activity. Using current salinity levels for several thousand years, they calculated that the world would have experienced less than 3 percent less salinity (about three millimeters) from about 1900 until 2100 under different temperature projections.
The team concluded that human activity was likely the primary cause of the saltwater in the oceans. At current rates of atmospheric carbon dioxide release, they said, this saltwater loss will continue for many billions of years without an immediate, positive response to act.
If humans continue unabated with continued industrial and agricultural use, the researchers conclude, the water level of the oceans will continue t