Our once and future oceans

Earth is the only planet in our Solar System with high concentrations of gaseous diatomic oxygen. Simultaneously, this unique feature of Earth’s atmosphere has allowed the presence of an ozone layer that absorbed UV radiations. The progressive oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans was sustained by an event of high organic carbon burial, called the Paleoproterozoic Lomagundi Event (ca. 2.3-2.1 billion years ago), which lasted well over 100 million years.

Oxygen is fundamental to life, and influences biogeochemical processes at their most fundamental level. But the oxygen content of Earth has varied greatly through time. In Earth history there have been relatively brief intervals when a very significant expansion of low-oxygen regions occurred throughout the world’s oceans. The discovery of black shales at many drill sites from the Atlantic, Indian, and the Pacific Ocean led to the recognition of widespread anoxic conditions in the global ocean spanning limited stratigraphic horizons. In 1976, S. O. Schlanger and H. C. Jenkyns termed these widespread depositional black shale intervals as “Oceanic Anoxic Events”. This was one of the greatest achievement of the DSDP (Deep Sea Drilling Project).

Corals one of the most vulnerable creatures in the ocean. Photo Credit: Katharina Fabricius/Australian Institute of Marine Science

Human activity is a major driver of the dynamics of Earth system. After the World War II, the impact of human activity on the global environment dramatically increased. Over the past 50 years, open ocean lost an estimated 2%, or 4.8 ±2.1 petamoles (77 billion metric tons), of its oxygen, and ocean oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) have expanded by an area about the size of the European Union. Deoxygenation is linked to other ocean stressors, including warming and acidification.

Ocean warming reduces the solubility of oxygen, and raises metabolic rates accelerating the rate of oxygen consumption. Warming also influence on thermal stratification and indirectly enhances salinity driven stratification through its effects on ice melt and precipitation. The increased stratification alters the mainly wind-driven circulation in the upper few hundred meters of the ocean and slows the deep overturning circulation. Intensified stratification may account for the remaining 85% of global ocean oxygen loss by reducing ventilation nd by affecting the supply of nutrients controlling production of organic matter and its subsequent sinking out of the surface ocean. Warming is predicted to exacerbate oxygen depletion in coastal systems through mechanisms similar to those of the open ocean.

Time scale [Gradstein et al., 2005] illustrating the stratigraphic position and nomenclature of OAEs (From Jenkyns, 2010).

The geological records show that large and rapid global warming events occurred repeatedly during the course of Earth history. The growing concern about modern climate change has accentuated interest in understanding the causes and consequences of these ancient abrupt warming events. The early Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event  (T-OAE; ∼183 mya) in the Jurassic Period is associated with a major negative carbon isotope excursion, mass extinction, marine transgression and global warming. Besides, the marked expansion of the oxygen minimum zone over the last decades, is quite similar to the model originally invoked for the genesis of Cretaceous OAEs. The better understanding of the Mesozoic ocean-climate system and the formation of OAEs would help us to predict environmental and biotic changes in a future greenhouse world.

References:

DENISE BREITBURG, LISA A. LEVIN, ANDREAS OSCHLIES, MARILAURE GRÉGOIRE, FRANCISCO P. CHAVEZ, DANIEL J. CONLEY, VÉRONIQUE GARÇON, DENIS GILBERT, DIMITRI GUTIÉRREZ, KIRSTEN ISENSEE, GIL S. JACINTO, KARIN E. LIMBURG, IVONNE MONTES, S. W. A. NAQVI, GRANT C. PITCHER, NANCY N. RABALAIS, MICHAEL R. ROMAN, KENNETH A. ROSE, BRAD A. SEIBEL, MACIEJ TELSZEWSKI, MORIAKI YASUHARA, JING ZHANG (2018), Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters, Science, Vol. 359, Issue 6371, DOI: 10.1126/science.aam7240

Jenkyns, H. C. (2010), Geochemistry of oceanic anoxic events, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 11, Q03004, doi:10.1029/2009GC002788.

Holz, M., Mesozoic paleogeography and paleoclimates – a discussion of the diverse greenhouse and hothouse conditions of an alien world, Journal of South American Earth Sciences (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.jsames.2015.01.001

Tennant, J. P., Mannion, P. D., Upchurch, P., Sutton, M. D. and Price, G. D. (2016), Biotic and environmental dynamics through the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous transition: evidence for protracted faunal and ecological turnover. Biol Rev. doi:10.1111/brv.12255