Posts Tagged ‘ocean acidification’
Plankton Death To Come with Acid Oceans and Sunlight
A number of marine diatom cells (Pleurosigma), which are an important group of phytoplankton in the oceans.
Credit: Michael Stringer
Global Warming has made oceans 30% more acidic already
“It’s clear we are conducting a giant experiment on the planet and we don’t know what we are doing.”
[This is a repost from my May 8 2012 article - see here for more on acid ocean impacts -- Stephen]
By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 8, 2012 (IPS)
Without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, sunlight will kill an unknown number of ocean phytoplankton, the planet’s most important organism, a new study reports this week.
Not only are phytoplankton, also known as marine algae, a vital component in the ocean’s food chain, they generate at least half of the oxygen we breathe.
In the not so distant future, sunlight, the very source of life for phytoplankton, will likely begin to kill them because of the ocean’s increasing acidity, researchers from China and Germany have learned.
“There’s a synergistic effect between increased ocean acidity and natural light,” says Ulf Riebesell of the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.
Riebesell added that it was also possible “phytoplankton could adapt”.
Researchers were surprised to discover that diatoms, one of the most important and abundant types of phytoplankton, fared very badly during shipboard experiments conducted by co-author Kunshan Gao, from the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University, Xiamen China.
Previous experiments in labs like Riebesell’s found that diatoms actually did better in high-acid seawater, unlike most other shell- forming plankton. Burning fossil fuels has made the oceans about 30 percent more acidic researchers discovered less than 10 years ago. Oceans absorb one third of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from using fossil fuels.
The good news is this has slowed the rate of global warming. The bad news is oceans are now more acidic and it will get worse as more CO2 is emitted. This is basic, well-understood ocean chemistry. Read the rest of this entry »
Ocean Acidification Leaves Mollusks Naked and Confused
Chilean intertidal carnivorous crab (Acanthocyclus hassleri)
Climate change is making oceans warmer and more acidic…expect the worst
By Stephen Leahy
When the carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans dissolves in seawater, carbonic acid is formed and calcium carbonate, vital for the formation of the skeletons and shells of many marine organisms, becomes scarcer.
MONTEREY, California, Oct 2 2012 (IPS)
Climate change will ruin Chilean sea snails’ ability to sniff out and avoid their archenemy, a predatory crab, according to Chilean scientists who presented their findings at an international science symposium here.
Researchers from Australia also revealed that as the oceans become more and more acidic, some fish become hyperactive and confused, and move towards their predators instead of trying to escape.
“The conditions in oceans are changing 100 times faster than at any time in the past,” said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, a marine biologist with CNRS-INSU and the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche in France.
Climate change is making oceans warmer and more acidic. “We are beginning to understand what will happen. I think we can expect the worst,” Gattuso told Tierramérica*.
Gattuso is one of nearly 600 scientists from around the world who presented their research on Sep. 24-27 at the Third International Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World: Ocean Acidification in Monterey, California.
Researchers discovered only 10 years ago that burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas has made the oceans about 30 percent more acidic since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Read the rest of this entry »
Ocean Acidification Leaves Mollusks Naked and Confused
By Stephen Leahy
When the carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans dissolves in seawater, carbonic acid is formed and calcium carbonate, vital for the formation of the skeletons and shells of many marine organisms, becomes scarcer.
MONTEREY, California, Oct 2 2012 (IPS) -
Climate change will ruin Chilean sea snails’ ability to sniff out and avoid their archenemy, a predatory crab, according to Chilean scientists who presented their findings at an international science symposium here.
Researchers from Australia also revealed that as the oceans become more and more acidic, some fish become hyperactive and confused, and move towards their predators instead of trying to escape.
“The conditions in oceans are changing 100 times faster than at any time in the past,” said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, a marine biologist with CNRS-INSU and the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche in France.
Climate change is making oceans warmer and more acidic. “We are beginning to understand what will happen. I think we can expect the worst,” Gattuso told Tierramérica*.
via IPS – Ocean Acidification Leaves Mollusks Naked and Confused | Inter Press Service.
Revealed: In Acidic Oceans Sunlight Kills Planet’s Most Important Organism — Marine Algae
A number of marine diatom cells (Pleurosigma), which are an important group of phytoplankton in the oceans.
Credit: Michael Stringer
“There’s a synergistic effect between increased ocean acidity and natural light”
“It’s clear we are conducting a giant experiment on the planet and we don’t know what we are doing.”
By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 8, 2012 (IPS)
Without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, sunlight will kill an unknown number of ocean phytoplankton, the planet’s most important organism, a new study reports this week.
Not only are phytoplankton, also known as marine algae, a vital component in the ocean’s food chain, they generate at least half of the oxygen we breathe.
In the not so distant future, sunlight, the very source of life for phytoplankton, will likely begin to kill them because of the ocean’s increasing acidity, researchers from China and Germany have learned.
“There’s a synergistic effect between increased ocean acidity and natural light,” says Ulf Riebesell of the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.
Riebesell added that it was also possible “phytoplankton could adapt”.
Researchers were surprised to discover that diatoms, one of the most important and abundant types of phytoplankton, fared very badly during shipboard experiments conducted by co-author Kunshan Gao, from the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University, Xiamen China.
Previous experiments in labs like Riebesell’s found that diatoms actually did better in high-acid seawater, unlike most other shell- forming plankton. Burning fossil fuels has made the oceans about 30 percent more acidic researchers discovered less than 10 years ago. Oceans absorb one third of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from using fossil fuels.
The good news is this has slowed the rate of global warming. The bad news is oceans are now more acidic and it will get worse as more CO2 is emitted. This is basic, well-understood ocean chemistry. Read the rest of this entry »
“We’re facing a planetary emergency” The Road to Rio (+20 years)
“Humanity is facing major challenges…urgent actions are needed”
Can we act as a true community?
By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 11, 2012 (IPS)
Humanity is driving Earth’s climate and ecosystems towards dangerous tipping points, requiring radical new forms of international cooperation and governance, experts say.
“We’re facing a planetary emergency,” said Owen Gaffney of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme based in Stockholm.
“We need to have a ‘constitutional moment’ in world politics, akin to the major transformative shift in governance after 1945 that led to the establishment of the United Nations and numerous other international organisations,” said Frank Biermann of VU University Amsterdam and director of the Earth System Governance Project.
“Humanity is facing major challenges…urgent actions are needed,” Biermann told IPS.
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Those challenges include, but are not limited to, increasing poverty, food, water and energy security, the financial crisis, climate change, ocean acidification, the loss of biodiversity. All of these challenges and their solutions are interconnected.
Normally, the complex, mutually dependent systems of the Earth can self-correct and are remarkably stable. However, they can reach thresholds or tipping points and then unexpectedly and abruptly shift, Gaffney said in an interview.
“We need only recall how the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis nearly collapsed the global financial system,” he said.
The upcoming Rio+20 conference on sustainable development needs to be the moment in human history when the nations of the world come together to find ways to ensure “the very survival of humanity”, he said. Read the rest of this entry »
Oceans Becoming Hot, Sour and Breathless
Oceans home to 80% of all life — plankton provide 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe
By Stephen Leahy
DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 3 (IPS)
The world’s oceans are becoming hot, sour and breathless – threatening a vital source of food for a billion people mainly in the developing world experts warned today at a special Oceans Day event at the UN climate negotiation.
Oceans are home 80 percent of all life on the planet and emissions from fossil fuels are turning them increasingly acidic, raising water temperatures and reducing the amount of oxygen in some regions said oceanographer Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK.
“We don’t know what all the consequences will be. We suspect the combination of all three will be far worse than one alone,” Turley told IPS in an interview on the sidelines of climate treaty negotiations known as COP 17.
It was only a few years ago that researchers realised that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) was making the surface waters of oceans more acidic. The oceans naturally absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and have now absorbed about a third of all human emissions. That has kept the climate from warming faster but the additional carbon is altering the oceans’ chemistry making them 30 percent more acidic.
One documented impact is that shell-forming creatures like plankton produce thinner shells in more acidic ocean waters. These species are often very important parts of the marine food chain. As emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere increase the more the ocean sours.
[See a powerful 11 min film on Ocean acidification]
In less than ten years at least 10 per cent of the Arctic Ocean surface waters will be too acid for shell-forming species like plankton. By 2040 most of the Arctic Ocean will be too acidic as will significant areas of the Antarctic Ocean said Turley.
The cold waters of the polar regions allow more CO2 to be absorbed faster. The oceans haven’t seen a rapid change like this in 60 million years, she explained.
“But there will also be strange impacts. New research is showing changes in growth, behaviour and reproduction in a variety of non-shell forming species.”
Estuaries and ocean upwelling zones that are often important fishing grounds are also regions where acidification is fastest. Those areas are also subject to low oxygen levels and increasing temperatures creating new conditions in the oceans that no marine species has ever had to cope with.
Oceans are also absorbing most of the extra heat trapped by the additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Again, without this land temperatures would far higher and extreme weather events far worse.
“There is some evidence that some crab species cannot tolerate higher temperatures when ocean is more acidic,” she said.
Coral Reefs In Dire Peril – 75% May Die In Coming Years
One of the most incredible natural wonders of our world is being decimated by our actions: burning fossil fuel, pollution of land and sea, overfishing. The most recent estimate shows 75% of the world’s coral reefs are threatened according to new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and 24 other organizations. The report is “Reefs at Risk Revisited“.
Here’s one thing you can do to help. Follow and encourage others to live by these Three Simple Rules:
1. Reduce.
Reduce fossil fuel consumption everywhere.
2. Eliminate.
Eliminate all non-essential activities and products that involve burning fossil fuel.
3. Demand.
Demand that business and government provide transport, activities and products that minimize fossil fuel use.
Reduce. Eliminate. Demand. R.E.D.
More on the Corals, Ocean Acidification, Bleaching, Overfishing.
I have written more than 15 articles in last few years about the serious threats corals face:
Record Heat Killing Caribbean and Indian Ocean Corals
What if our air was 30% more acidic like the Oceans? May be 120% more acidic by 2060
What if our air was 30% more acidic like the Oceans? May be 120% more acidic by 2060
Bleached coastal corals. Bantry Bay, Australia. R Leahy 2006
[2°C is a death sentence for corals scientists agree due to ocean acidification and bleaching resulting from emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However the developed nations of the world have set 2 degrees C as the climate stabilization target not that any of them have figured out how to reach this target. It is as if the oceans don't matter. This reflects a fundamental ignorance about life on Earth, an assumption that we can lose or seriously damage entire ecosystems without suffering any consequences.
This story shows we need to get serious about tackling emission reductions (below 2C) and preserving anything that sequesters or traps carbon because these will be tremendously valuable in a climate-changed world . — Steve
By Stephen Leahy*
COPENHAGEN, Dec 11 (IPS/TerraViva)
What would it be like if the air we breathe was 30 percent more acidic? The oceans are already 30 percent more acidic, and on their way to becoming 120 percent more acidic in 50 years at the current rates of carbon dioxide emissions.
Acidification is already affecting coral reefs, algae and plankton, the base of many marine food chains, according to a new report released here by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
“In the last 10 years, the growth of coral reefs in many areas has declined 15 percent,” said Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the IUCN’s Global Marine Programme.
“That’s a dramatic shift,” Lundin told TerraViva.
The oceans absorb some carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, but the vast quantity being emitted – mainly from the burning of fossil fuels – has altered basic ocean chemistry, turning it sour. That’s also affecting shell-forming plankton and disrupting the growth rates of other species, Lundin said.
The stated goal of many countries to stabilise global temperatures within an increase of no more than 2.0 degrees C. is still “a death sentence for most coral reefs”, he said. The 2.0 C. target implies a level of CO2 in the atmosphere of 450 parts per million (ppm), well up from the historical average of 280 ppm. Read the rest of this entry »
Deep CO2 Cuts May Be Last Hope for Acid Oceans
(Report from the World Oceans Conference in Indonesia)
By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 15 (IPS) –
Ocean acidification offers the clearest evidence of dangers of climate change.
And yet the indisputable fact that burning fossil fuels is slowly turning the oceans into an acid bath has been largely ignored by industrialised countries and their climate treaty negotiators, concluded delegates from 76 countries at the World Oceans Conference in Manado, Indonesia.
Oceans and coastal areas must be on the agenda at the crucial climate talks in Copenhagen in December, they wrote in a declaration. “We must come to the rescue of the oceans,” declared Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the opening of high-level government talks on Thursday in the northern city of Manado.
It is fair to say most international climate negotiators aren’t aware of the impacts of climate change on the oceans, said Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the IUCN’s Global Marine Programme.
“Very few people understand that carbon emissions are making the oceans acidic,” Lundin told IPS.
Acid Oceans and Seas Without Fish – Hot New Doc
Lots of buzz about a hot, new documentary film A Sea Change which is about ocean acidification and its potential to empty the oceans of fish. I haven’t seen the film although I had a chance to at a seafood conference in San Diego last month but couldn’t face a visual version of a topic I’ve written about since 2006. I have enough trouble sleeping as it is…
Turns out the filmmakers got the idea to make the film by ‘googling’ ”ocean acidification” in Nov 2006 and found very few entries. I guess my 2006 articles were among the first-ever articles published about ocean acidification and how climate change is a major threat to the global oceans. — Stephen
July 5 2006
Ailing Reefs Face New Threat of Acidity
By Stephen Leahy
Climate change is making the world’s oceans more acidic, seriously endangering marine ecosystems, including coral reefs.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have already made the oceans 30 percent more acidic than they have been in millions of years, according to a new report by leading scientists. And the rate of acidification is accelerating as the oceans absorb more than two billion tonnes of carbon each year from the atmosphere.
“This is a dramatic change in the world’s oceans, a change that marine organisms have never dealt with before,” said Joan Kleypas, the report’s lead author and a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
“The oceans have changed and they are becoming more acidic. There is no debate about this,” Kleypas told IPS. Read the rest of this entry »
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