1. Oceans By Emma Ferries

2. Oceans play a vital role in the earth’s ecosystem by regulating temperatures, absorbing minerals, and absorbing carbon dioxide from the air surrounding us.

3. Phytoplankton Phytoplankton on the ocean’s surface produce more than a quarter of the earth’s oxygen, and by using the ocean as a place to dump wastes such as sewage and chemical effluent, we are causing the plankton to die off.

4. The ocean is critical because it provides us with a great amount of food, but the hole in the earth’s ozone layer is heating up oceans, causing marine life to decrease.

5. In Antarctica, icebergs are melting, causing sea levels to rise, and introducing a great amount of freshwater into the sea. This doesn’t maintain the balance of salt in the ocean, causing a wipe out in most marine life that need a regular amount of salt water in order to survive.

6. In the ocean, there is so much pollution in the water that it participates in the cycle of evaporation into the clouds, resulting in acid rain.

7. Food Chain Due to the fact that sea levels will rise, animals and certain plants will become extinct, breaking the food chain. For example, polar bears live on ice, but when the ice melts, they can’t survive in the glacier water and must be in cold climates to live, resulting in death, and the fish amounts will grow because there is one less predator eating them.

8. The change of atmosphere that we have created is causing more CO 2 to enter the ocean than to exit it, creating more acidic waters for marine life.

9. As oceans get warmer from the atmosphere heating up, hurricanes and typhoons will become more frequent and damage more coastal areas.

10. Dead Zones Not only is there heating of the oceans, but low oxygen areas known as “dead zones”, which in time could lead to destruction of ocean life. Dead zones take up almost 2% of the ocean, but could take up to 10% of it in the year 2100, but if expecting the worst, “dead zones” could take up more than 1/5 of the world’s oceans by that time.

11. Ocean pollution is widespread, and makes up approx. 35% of global warming, because of the currents, tides, and winds that make the pollutants move around constantly.

12. References Understanding Our Environment - Oxford Vancouver Sun A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson www.google.com http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/the-global- warming-hypothesis-and-ocean-heat/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/the-global- warming-hypothesis-and-ocean-heat/ http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/global_warming. htm http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/global_warming. htm www.pacificviews.org/weblog/archives/002334.html http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OceansGlobalWarming.php http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/ 01/090128-ocean-dead-zones.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/ 01/090128-ocean-dead-zones.html Understanding Our Environment - Oxford Vancouver Sun A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson www.google.com http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/the-global- warming-hypothesis-and-ocean-heat/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/the-global- warming-hypothesis-and-ocean-heat/ http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/global_warming. htm http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/global_warming. htm www.pacificviews.org/weblog/archives/002334.html http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OceansGlobalWarming.php http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/ 01/090128-ocean-dead-zones.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/ 01/090128-ocean-dead-zones.html