Such a decline of this ocean circulation will stagnate the bottom of the oceans and generate further impacts affecting climate and marine ecosystems for centuries to come.
The ocean is one of the largest dynamic carbon sinks in the world and is prone to increased carbon emissions from human activities. There are even proposals to use the ocean to sequester carbon to reduce carbon emissions.
An oil slick off the coast of Thailand continued to expand Friday and was approaching beaches on the east coast, home to fragile coral and seagrass, officials said.
Thailand’s navy was helping Wednesday to clean up a spill of as much as 128 tons (160,000 liters) of crude oil that leaked from a pipeline in the Gulf of Thailand.
At least 31 people lost their lives in three separate shipwrecks over the course of four days last week in the Aegean Sea, and an unknown number are still missing.