Rising sea levels are just one way climate change is reshaping the world's oceans, says Susan Lozier. Lozier, an oceanographer, teaches at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. She leads an international panel that is studying the effects of climate change in the North Atlantic.
Transcript:
From Duke University, this is Glad You Asked, where we consider the question, “What should we be talking about this election season?”
“I’m Susan Lozier. I’m a professor in the Nicholas School here at Duke. In particular, I study the ocean’s role in climate change.
“What I think we should be talking more about is climate change. Climate change has a big impact on the ocean. The one people might most be aware of is sea level rise, but the ocean also plays a really large role in the fact that is a reservoir for carbon dioxide.
“Today, the ocean has absorbed 40% of the carbon dioxide that has been released since the Industrial Revolution. The mechanism is that in very high latitudes in north latitudes and southern latitudes near the poles, this is where the ocean can become very cold in the winter time, and it can take the properties that it has absorbed on the surface, like carbon dioxide, and because the water becomes so dense, it sinks to the bottom.
“As the planet warms, the concern is that those surface waters won’t get cold enough to actually sink.
“The ocean plays a very critical role in capturing and storing carbon dioxide. Global warming has the potential to fundamentally change the ocean’s ability to capture and store that Co2, and that has strong implications then for atmospheric temperatures and the continued warming of our planet.”
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