Bluer Blues: Climate Change Will Alter the Colors of the Oceans, MIT Study Says - The Weather Channel

Global Warming Could Change Color of Oceans

Climate change will make the oceans' blues bluer and their greens greener, a new study says.

An ocean’s color depends on how sunlight is reflected by whatever is in the water.

Microorganisms called phytoplankton contain chlorophyll, a pigment that absorbs more of the blue part of the light spectrum and less of the green. The green light is reflected. So water with more phytoplankton has a greenish hue. Areas without the organisms, like the middle of the ocean, look blue.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a model to simulate how different species of phytoplankton will grow and interact with the oceans and how that will change as global temperatures rise, according to a statement about the study.

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Running the model through the end of the 21st century, the scientists found that more than half of the world’s oceans will shift in color by 2100 because of climate change.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Communications, suggests areas like the subtropics will have even less phytoplankton because warmer water will have fewer nutrients to feed the microorganisms. Those areas will become even bluer than they are today.

Regions that are cooler today, such as near the Earth’s poles, will become warmer, bringing more nutrients that will feed larger blooms of phytoplankton. Those areas will become a deeper green.

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"The model suggests the changes won't appear huge to the naked eye, and the ocean will still look like it has blue regions in the subtropics and greener regions near the equator and poles," said lead author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a principal research scientist at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. "That basic pattern will still be there. But it'll be enough different that it will affect the rest of the food web that phytoplankton supports."

"It could be potentially quite serious," Dutkiewicz added. "Different types of phytoplankton absorb light differently, and if climate change shifts one community of phytoplankton to another, that will also change the types of food webs they can support."

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

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