The Breathing Ocean

Oxygen is important for the living creatures in the deep ocean. When global oceans warm, some processes lead to less oxygen in the deep. This somewhat scary trend is what Rachael Sanders investigate in her work in the project O2Ocean.

In Bergen, mid-March, the climate festival Varmere, våtere, villere (Warmer, wetter, wilder) filled a 3-floored house in Bergen over three days, for talks and debates on climate change and necessary solutions.

Rachael Sanders, postdoctoral fellow at NORCE and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research was at stage with a talk on the breathing ocean and the oxygen situation in the world oceans today.

As the global oceans warms, there are processes driving change in the ocean interior. As we know warmer water can hold less gas, the ocean takes up less oxygen from the surface. We also know, that the oceans warms, it get more stratified, and not so much waters – with fresh oxygen is transported into the deep ocean.

– In this project, I look at trends within climate change. This is very interesting, but also scary, Sanders admits in the podcast.

Listen to an interesting conversation with podcast host Ingjald Pilskog, on chemical oceanography from the Southern ocean surrounding the Antarctica, to the North Atlantic in a specific cold anomaly episode in 2015.

And finally, please remember that the Bjerknes Climate Podcast is a scienctist-to-scientist talk – so be prepared for some specialized knowledge!