Fish poop is full of carbon, and the ocean is full of fish poop. A new study estimates up to 16 percent of all the carbon in the world s oceans come from fish faeces, fish breath, and other fish excretions.
Scientists have little understanding of the role fishes play in the global carbon cycle linked to climate change, but a Rutgers-led study found that carbon in feces, respiration and other excretions from fishes - roughly 1.65 billion tons annually - make up about 16 percent of the total carbon that sinks below the ocean s upper layers.
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“Our reconstruction shows that the first half of the Holocene was colder than in industrial times due to the cooling effects of remnant ice sheets from the previous glacial period contrary to previous reconstructions of global temperatures,” says lead author Samantha Bova, a postdoctoral researcher associate in the lab of coauthor Yair Rosenthal, professor in the department of marine and coastal sciences and department of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Scientists used marine calcareous (calcium carbonate-containing) fossils from foraminifers single-celled organisms that live at the ocean surface to reconstruct the temperature histories of the two most recent warm intervals on Earth. They are the Last Interglacial period from 128,000 to 115,000 years ago and the Holocene.
Their findings, published in
Nature, show that the annual global temperature today is the warmest of the past 10,000 years contrary to recent research.
Some skeptics contend that climate model predictions of future warming must be wrong. The scientists, however, say their findings will challenge long-held views on the temperature history in the Holocene era, which began about 12,000 years ago.
“Our reconstruction shows that the first half of the Holocene was colder than in industrial times due to the cooling effects of remnant ice sheets from the previous glacial period contrary to previous reconstructions of global temperatures,” says lead author Samantha Bova, a postdoctoral researcher associate in the lab of coauthor Yair Rosenthal, professor in the department of marine and coastal sciences and department of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.