As greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the oceans, marine life biodiversity could plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to new research.

Oceanographers modeled future marine biodiversity under different projected climate scenarios and found that if emissions are not curbed, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone could come to mirror the substantial impact humans already have on marine biodiversity by around 2100.

Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest risk of extinction, according to the study in Science.

“Aggressive and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are critical for avoiding a major mass extinction of ocean species,” says senior author Curtis Deutsch, who began the research as a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington and is now at Princeton University.

The study finds, however, that reversing greenhouse gas emissions now could reduce the risk of extinction by more than 70%.

“The silver lining is that the future isn’t written in stone,” says first author Justin Penn, who began the study as a graduate student at the University of Washington and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton. “The extinction magnitude that we found depends strongly on how much carbon dioxide we emit moving forward.

“There’s still enough time to change the trajectory of CO2 emissions and prevent the magnitude of warming that would cause this mass extinction.”

Read the full article about preventing mass extinction in oceans at Futurity.