What could happen to the Arctic Ocean when the endangered animals and plants are gone from it?
Missy T asked:
List all of the plants threatened or endangered due to global warming? Why?
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List all of the plants threatened or endangered due to global warming? Why?
Add a link here 1
That wouldn’t be necessary anymore , because we would be gone soon too .
Depending on how things play out, the most probable answer is that existing species will extend their ranges from more southern waters, and they will start to speciate, so that in a few hundred thousand years we probably will have some distinct species in what is now arctic waters.
I remember reading an article in Scientific American (I think it was that magazine–might have been Yahoo News though) about evidence for year-round temperate climate at the North Pole millions of years ago, based on spores from that time period; I think that a mutated fern was correlated with a shift to more modern temperatures.
Of greater concern is a scenario from the latest Scientific America, where rising temperatures cause a lack of oxygenation of the oceans and the rise of anaerobic photosynthesizing purple bacteria to closer to the surface. This would release toxic into the atmosphere, which are known to attack the ozone level, leading to UV radiation poisoning. In the past (according to Peter D. Ward) this may have caused massive extinctions that were not caused by meteor impact.
So either new, warmer temperature animals and plants will move in as cold-adapted versions die out, or everything may be blasted by killer radiation.