Climate Change Impacts Life Under the Sea

The composition of plankton in the oceans is changing as a result of global warming. Living marine organisms generally move towards the poles to remain under the same temperature conditions. And when fish, for example, leave the Equator the fish fauna erodes in warmer sea areas.

Professor Thomas Kiørboe, Centre for Ocean Life at DTU, studies marine ecosystems, their functions and ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. He works on clarifying the basic processes determining carbon cycling in the oceans, as it has a decisive impact on our climate.

Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier Reacts to Changing Ocean Temperatures

NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission uses ships and planes to measure how ocean temperatures affect Greenland’s vast icy expanses. Jakobshavn Glacier, known in Greenlandic as Sermeq Kujalle, on Greenland’s central western side, has been one of the island’s largest contributor’s to sea level rise, losing mass at an accelerating rate.

In a new study, the OMG team found that between 2016 and 2017, Jakobshavn Glacier grew slightly and the rate of mass loss slowed down. They traced the causes of this thickening to a temporary cooling of ocean temperatures in the region.

Narrated by OMG Principal Investigator Josh Willis.
Music: Rising Tides by Rainman [PRS] Complete transcript available.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Kathryn Mersmann