Study finds oxygen rise in the tropical upper ocean during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Oxygen is fundamental to sustaining life on Earth. The ocean gets its oxygen from its uppermost layers in contact with the atmosphere. As our planet continues to warm, the ocean is gradually losing its capacity to absorb oxygen, with severe consequences on marine ecosystems and human activities that depend on them. While these trends will likely continue in the future, it remains unclear how ocean oxygen will redistribute across the ocean interior, where ocean currents and biological degradation of biomass dominate over atmospheric diffusion.