Global heating risks most cataclysmic extinction of marine life in 250m years

Boats sailing among the Marmara sea covered with sea snot that develops on the surface of the water due to the excessive proliferation of phytoplankton, gravely threatening the marine biome, in the Darica district of Kocaeli, Turkey. Photograph: Yasin Akgül/AFP/Getty Images

Global heating is causing such a drastic change to the world’s oceans that it risks a mass extinction event of marine species that rivals anything that’s happened in the Earth’s history over tens of millions of years, new research has warned.

Accelerating climate change is causing a “profound” impact upon ocean ecosystems that is “driving extinction risk higher and marine biological richness lower than has been seen in Earth’s history for the past tens of millions of years”, according to the study.