The Current Rate of Ocean Warming Could Bring the Greatest Extinction of Sealife in 250 Million Years
If greenhouse gas pollution remains unchecked, global warming could trigger the most catastrophic extinction of ocean species since the end of the Permian age, about 250 million years ago, scientists warned in a new study today. During the end-Permian Extinction, researchers estimate up to 90 percent of marine organisms died out in overheated, acidic and deoxygenated oceans.
The Great Dying, as it’s sometimes called, the worst known mass extinction event in the history of the Earth, wiped out more than half of all biological families, including more than 70 percent of land-dwelling vertebrates, leaving a clear mark in the fossil record.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate: oceans
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.