Climate Change Is Getting So Bad That the Ocean Is Changing Color

Changes in ocean color can be driven by manifold factors, but scientists tend to focus on phytoplanktons, which form the bedrock of the ocean's ecosystem and are found near the surface.

Phytoplanktons contain the green pigment chlorophyll, and as such, tracking the changes in the green hues they reflect from sunlight has served as the go-to indicator of their population, and thereby the ocean's health. But this method has its shortcomings. Specifically, chlorophyll levels tend to swing naturally year-to-year, leading some scientists to believe it would take some 40 years of observations before a trend could be spotted,Cael's team sidestepped this by observing colors across a fuller spectrum, encompassing more than just green.

Their findings? That over 56 percent of the world's ocean surface has noticeably shifted in color, generally getting greener.According to the data, while most areas trend greener, some have shown shifts in the red and blue spectrums, too. Overall, these shifts in color match the predictions of a simulation of how the ocean might respond to rising levels of greenhouse gases — a compelling link to climate change, though one that could use bolstering in future studies.

"But this gives us an additional piece of evidence that human activity is likely affecting large parts of the global biosphere in a way that we haven't been able to understand."

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