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“The last time carbon
dioxide levels were this
high was during the
Pliocene Era, between 3
and 5 million years ago.”ocean acidification is thought to have
played an important role in Earth’s
worst-ever mass extinction event 252
million years ago.
The effect of climate change on the
world’s oceans will likely worsen in
coming decades. In June, scientists
with the NOAA and Scripps Institu-
tion of Oceanography announced
carbon dioxide levels had reached
the highest levels since human records
began. The last time carbon dioxide
levels were this high was during the
Pliocene era, between 3 and 5 million
years ago, when global temperatures
were about 4 degrees Celsius warmer
than they are today. Current climate
models suggest that if greenhouse gas
emissions continue on their current
trajectory, we may be on course to see
4 degrees of warming by 2100.
As a result, understanding the
role oceans have on global systems is
becoming more and more important.
Ocean currents are known to greatly
affect the weather. Colder sea surface
temperatures in the Pacific, for exam-
ple, have the potential to cause mega-
droughts across the U.S. Midwest.
“Changes in ocean temperatures and
currents brought about by climate
change will lead to alterations in cli-mate patterns,” the Environmental
Protection Agency warned in 2016.
Despite the crucial role oceans—
which make up two-thirds of the
planet—play in global ecosystems,
only about 5 percent have been
explored. For this reason, Cameron
is calling for more ocean research,
an area of science he says is “insanely
underfunded.”
From still discovering new species
to learning more about plate tecton-
ics, Cameron believes researching the
deepest parts of the oceans are essen-
tial to our understanding of several
life-threatening factors for humanity.
“The deadliest tsunamis are created
by seismic activity in the deep trenches,
including the [2004] Christmas tsu-
nami that devastated Indonesia and
the monstrous waves that caused the
meltdown of the Fukushima reactor
in Japan,” he says. “Only by studying
what’s happening down there in much
more detail could we ever develop
predictive models and advanced
warning systems.”
Cameron wants to see enormous-
funding for a “global fleet of swarm
robotics” to investigate the oceans’
depths and give scientists more data to
measure the effects of climate change:
“[From] the flux of carbon into the
oceans and how much is being seques-
tered in the deep; the destabilization
of methane-hydrate deposits that are
dumping vast quantities of warming
gas into our atmosphere...the flux of
heat from the warming atmosphere
into the oceans, and how long the
oceans can act to buffer that heat
before they’re maxed out; [to] the
way heat is being stored in the oceans
and coming back out as the increased
energy driving the powerful hurri-
canes and cyclones that are devastat-
ing the world.”
If we fail, Cameron says, it will be
“at our extreme peril.”