Scientists at the University of Exeter and Queen Mary University of London in the UK have found that global warming can reduce the efficiency of oceans' food chains and threaten the survival of large animals, as well as damage food security. This was announced in a press release on the EurekAlert! Website. The researchers' article was published in the journal Nature.
An increase in average temperature of four degrees Celsius due to climate change reduces energy transfer in plankton's food webs by 56 percent. Warming increases the metabolic costs of growth and the emergence of new organisms, which decreases the total biomass of plankton. Phytoplankton and zooplankton are the backbone of the food webs that support the freshwater and marine ecosystems on which humankind also depends.
Overall, only about 10 percent of the energy produced at one level of the food web goes to the next level.
Earlier it was reported that an international team of scientists from Ireland, Great Britain and Germany recorded an unprecedented weakening of the warm sea current of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean over the past thousand years. This could contribute to more extreme weather events, including worsening winter storms, summer drought and heatwaves.
