Will the earth get colder now? I am afraid that many people will answer no, because global warming is an established fact . Even if we try our best to control carbon emissions, the temperature will not drop in an hour and a half. After all, it does not take humans a year or two to raise the temperature of the earth.

Global warming problem is getting worse

But a study pointed out that the Southern Ocean has been absorbing carbon dioxide like crazy , and it is the only region in the world that absorbs more than it emits. So, it has been absorbing carbon according to this trend, can it really reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Southern Ocean

Many people are very unfamiliar when they hear the word "Southern Ocean". In our understanding, there are only four oceans on the earth. Where does this Southern Ocean refer to? Unfamiliar is right. The Southern Ocean is a geographical concept born in 2021, which is the Antarctic waters we used to say .

Antarctic waters

The Southern Ocean is also called the Southern Ocean. Unlike the Arctic Ocean, which is surrounded by the continents of Asia, Europe and North America, the Southern Ocean surrounds the entire Antarctic continent. It is a cold water area with an annual water temperature of -2°C-10°C and an average water depth of 4000-5000 meters . With 60 degrees south latitude as the dividing line, the Southern Ocean is separated from the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. Not all countries recognize the Southern Ocean on the grounds that it does not meet the definition of "ocean" as it is not bordered by any landmass to the north .

silhouette of the four oceans

Therefore, the Southern Ocean is currently only a geographical concept, but it does not affect scientists' continued research. The Southern Ocean is a paradise for polar creatures. There are biological resources such as penguins, seals, whales, and krill, as well as fossil energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas . What makes scientists even more happy is that the Southern Ocean absorbs about 530 million tons more carbon dioxide each year than it releases, meaning that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Southern Ocean is lower than anywhere else on Earth.

So what's absorbing carbon dioxide from the Southern Ocean?

Antarctic waters

absorb carbon

The Southern Ocean is a vast ocean. Even if there is a small island, it is close to the polar regions and has a cold climate. There is almost no vegetation on it, and there is only tundra in summer. Although carbon dioxide is soluble in water, the amount that can be dissolved is very small, and the area of ​​the Southern Ocean is only 20.327 million square kilometers , which is far less than that of other oceans. It seems unlikely that it relies on seawater to absorb carbon.

There are numerous producers in the ocean. They are inconspicuous at all, and they need a microscope to see their real bodies. These are algae that absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen day and night. It is strange to say that plants also originated in the ocean and then landed on land, but there are very few more advanced eukaryotic plants in the ocean. On the contrary, the more primitive algae have been maintained in the ocean for hundreds of millions of years. .

Algae in the ocean

The Southern Ocean is rich in krill, which is known as the last granary of the earth. After the food crisis in the future, human beings can feed on it. Scientists estimate that the number of krill in the waters near Antarctica has reached 1 billion tons . Krill feeds on algae and can breed so many krills. There must be a large number of algae in the Southern Ocean. It is the algae in the Southern Ocean that absorb carbon .

Algae are the early life on earth, in the long evolution process, they have evolved photosynthesis. But the evolution time of algae is too long, so the level span is very large. There are relatively low-level prokaryotes, such as cyanobacteria (also known as cyanobacteria), and there are also very advanced eukaryotes . The biological classification spans the prokaryotic kingdom, Protists and Plants.

Flood of blue-green algae

Most algae cannot be discerned by the naked eye, but some algae grow very large, such as kelp, and can spread more than 10 meters in the water. Lower algae rely on chlorophyll for photosynthesis, and higher algae use chloroplasts. Both higher and lower, they release oxygen. Fish breathe by gills, and they rarely breathe air directly, so algae are the food and clothing parents of marine fish .

However, as a kind of organism, algae also have to perform respiration . If the number of algae is too large, the oxygen consumption is greater than the oxygen produced by itself, which will cause a large number of deaths of water-deficient fish. Algae blooms indicate that the nutrient in the water is very concentrated, which is called eutrophication . Generally speaking, there are many nitrogen compounds and phosphide compounds in the domestic wastewater discharged by human beings, which are very beneficial to the growth of algae.

Cyanobacteria under the microscope

The algae in the Southern Ocean are usually small but unmanageable, feeding hundreds of millions of krill and other fish.

protection mechanism

Due to the use of energy by humans, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen, and the earth has experienced a greenhouse effect. In fact, the earth is initiating a self-protection mechanism in a place invisible to human beings . Scientists have found that the chemical synthesis of producers has increased to varying degrees compared with the past.

Human activities have a heavy impact on nature

That is to say, the photosynthesis of an algae has increased compared to the same kind of algae 100 years ago, because the earth will maintain carbon balance . The oxygen produced by the producer, in addition to the consumers and decomposers, is also needed by itself. If carbon dioxide increases, it will inevitably compress the space for oxygen, and if the balance between the two is not ensured, the producers themselves will be destroyed. Therefore, the earth maintains the gas concentration in its atmosphere within a range by balancing its ecology .

In history, there have been cases where the concentration of carbon dioxide is not enough. A wave of global cooling of the earth has wiped out most of the producers, and then volcanic eruptions have been used to raise the carbon dioxide to the amount needed to maintain its own temperature. In the same way, now that the world is warming, the earth has turned on the protection mechanism again, so that the producers are full of fire , the purpose is to lock the carbon in the organism once again .

Greenhouse effect is an important factor leading to global warming

The most abundant element of fossil energy we use is carbon, because their predecessors are ancient organisms, which belong to the energy conversion of the earth , which converts biological energy into chemical energy and is locked in the earth's crust. Humans release it, carbon goes into the atmosphere, and according to Earth's mechanisms, this carbon is returned to the organisms again through their photosynthesis .

"Benefits"

Since the Southern Ocean is absorbing carbon frantically, why is the carbon dioxide of the entire earth still rising? This is because humans emit too much carbon!

The Southern Ocean is located near Antarctica, the southernmost tip of the earth. It is the last pure land on earth and the only land without permanent inhabitants. Naturally, it is impossible to have any industry. The carbon dioxide in the Southern Ocean mainly comes from the respiration of organisms and the polar scientific research team. These quantities are not worth mentioning in the face of the algae, the producers of the Southern Ocean. Therefore, the Southern Ocean can absorb 530 million tons more carbon than it emits every year .

However, in the face of human carbon emissions, the producers of the Southern Ocean are once again irrelevant. To control the amount of carbon, a Southern Ocean alone is not enough . To make matters worse, the burden on the Southern Ocean may start to increase in 2022, because of the fires in Australia and the eruption of the Tonga volcano .

Both events occurred in the southern hemisphere, and the amount of carbon dioxide produced cannot be digested by the Southern Ocean in a short period of time. Especially with the volcanoes in Tonga, it is an ongoing process with effects that spread over several years .

Tonga Volcano

The Southern Ocean itself is also under pressure from the melting of Antarctic glaciers. The Antarctic glaciers are not only the water we imagined, but also block ancient minerals and ancient organisms in the glaciers. The melting of the glaciers into the Southern Ocean will change the composition of the seawater in the Southern Ocean, and the algae will either face destruction or an outbreak . Either way, the Southern Ocean will never be as calm as it is now.

As a rare area on earth that can combat carbon excess, the Southern Ocean is losing its advantages step by step .

protect the Earth

The carbon that the Southern Ocean absorbs every year is far from enough to account for current global warming. The earth does have its own protection mechanism, but from the perspective of past history, every time the earth triggers protection, the consequence is that the biosphere is reshuffled .

The Earth has faced greater global warming than it is now, but it can still bring down the temperature and reshape the ecology in the future. The earth follows the law of entropy , and everything will only advance in the direction of the evolution of celestial bodies. It does not care which creatures will become extinct in this process. From the earth's point of view, all living things are the same, they don't care if they are more, and they don't care if they are less. Every living thing is just a tool for it to maintain itself .

The earth that living things cannot do without

According to the past history of the earth, the temperature will definitely drop, but we don't know, will human beings become the victim of this cooling? In the face of current global warming, mankind still has a chance to save. Many countries have begun to replace fossil energy with new energy sources , and are also actively carrying out controllable nuclear reactions. According to scientists, the earth has a lot of energy, but it is limited by the level of human civilization, and we can only use the most intuitive energy .