A new study reveals the world's oceans are losing their oxygen content far more rapidly because of climate change. If left unchecked, this startling loss of oxygen or "deoxygenation" threatens to spread across larger regions of the oceans by 2030 and 2040.

Currently, this deoxygenation caused by climate change is already detectable in the southern Indian Ocean and parts of the eastern tropical Pacific and Atlantic basins, according to the study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

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"Loss of oxygen in the ocean is one of the serious side effects of a warming atmosphere, and a major threat to marine life," said NCAR scientist Matthew Long, lead author of the study.

"Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it's been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change. This new study tells us when we can expect the impact from climate change to overwhelm the natural variability."

Because of climate change, the warming atmosphere constantly heats the surface of the ocean at above normal temperatures. The result is the oxygen content starts to fall, mainly because warmer waters kills off more of the phytoplankton that produce between 50 percent to 85 percent of the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Phytoplankton use photosynthesis to transform sunlight and carbon dioxide into food. The byproduct of this photosynthesis is oxygen.

The drop in oxygen concentrations noted by the study might be small, amounting to just a few percent in some cases, but a little deoxygenation can have dire consequences for humans and other forms of life.

A further reason for the deoxygenation is that as water warms, it expands and is less likely to sink. This outcome reduces the transport of oxygen from the atmosphere into the deep ocean where much oxygen is stored. The ocean gets its entire oxygen supply from the surface.

Tagsdeoxygenation, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Phytoplankton, Oxygen