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Water Pollution and Climate Change: Biogeochemical Linkages, Feedback Mechanisms, and the Compounding Crisis of the Anthropocene
Summary
Researchers review the bidirectional feedbacks between water pollution and climate change, showing how eutrophication, ocean acidification, hypoxia, and plastic pollution both respond to and accelerate warming through disrupted carbon and nitrogen cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced ocean carbon sequestration capacity.
Water pollution and climate change are two of the greatest environmental crises in the 21st century. While they were historically investigated separately, recent investigations into the connection between the two show that they have complex and mutually reinforcing feedback loops Conversely, temperatures are getting hotter, the amount of precipitation is changing, and more extreme weather will occur as a result of climate change. This paper will discuss how water pollution adds to the emissions of greenhouse gases, disrupts carbon and nitrogen cycling, and has a detrimental effect on the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon. This paper will also examine how the effects of eutrophication, hypoxia, ocean acidification and plastic pollution are linked because they both respond to climate change and contribute to climate change. This paper will use original peer-reviewed literature in the fields of biogeochemistry, oceanography, limnology and environmental science to demonstrate that the relationship between water pollution and climate change calls for an integrated response, and for transdisciplinary scientific collaboration.