coral reefs

Will Super Cyclone Yasi be Australia’s Katrina? Landfall Wed as Cat 5 Storm

Stephen 1 Must Read, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, Hurricane, News, Science , , , , , , ,

This is what climate change looks like

[Stunning satellite photo of Yasi on landfall here.]

[Update 24:00 EST Feb 2. Can it be true? No one has been killed or seriously injured? If that holds up over the next few days it will be absolutely stunning. Kudos to Australian govt and Australians.

[Update 17:30 EST Feb 2. Yasi has moved well inland leaving devastated coastal towns and landscape behind – houses flattened, 90% of trees broken, not a leaf left on bushes. Pix here

[Update 10:30 EST Feb 2 LANDFALL: South of Cairns at the beautiful town of Mission Beach as Cat 5. This is where Cyclone Larry came ashore in 2006, the worst cyclone in 100 yrs, and destroyed much of the area. The last 1500 endangered cassowaries — large flightless bird — live in the jungles there.

[Update: 18:00 EST Feb 1- Yasi landfall expected at high tide bringing storm surge of 3-4 9! metres propelled by 280-300 kph winds. City of Cairns in direct path. “Catastrophic” storm says Premier]

Following the recent record-breaking flooding, Queensland, Australia’s is facing yet another extreme weather event as super cyclone Yasi bears down on them. Yasi is expected to reach has reached dangerous Category 4 5 strength, generating winds of up to 280 300 kph when it hits the Queensland state coast early on Thursday (2pm Wednesday, GMT). Yasi is a huge storm as the satellite image above shows – it is about 600-700 km diameter making it an extremely large cyclone (cover half the USA). (Latest Met service satellite imagery)

For comparison Hurricane Katrina was also very large but only about a Cat 1 or 2 on landfall based on final data from NOAA that went largely unreported. Katrina’s storm surge caused most of the damage which could be the case with Yasi. One major difference is that Queensland does not have a major city on the coast (or even a small one protected by poorly designed levees). Shockingly even a year after Katrina more than 500,000 people remained displaced.

Large areas of Queensland are still underwater or mud-covered from flooding just 2 weeks ago that caused billions of dollars in damage. It was so bad that Australians now have to pay a temporary flood damage tax to help cover the costs… And now Yasi.

Australia may need a permanent climate change disaster tax.

This is what climate change looks like – record-breaking extreme weather events. The Queensland floods nor Yasi are the direct result of climate change. However because burning fossil fuels traps more of the sun’s heat in the atmosphere the odds and strength of extreme events increase as climate science has stated for two decades now. Here is my latest article on this The Yin and Yang of Climate Extremes We Will See More of.

Climate change loads the dice in favour of extreme events. Queensland has been very unlucky lately. Help them out if you can. — Stephen

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Science Articles on Acid Oceans and Coral Reefs

Stephen Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, OCEAN ,

Series of my science articles documenting how global warming is transforming the Oceans and threatening Coral Reefs

No Safe Havens in Increasingly Acid Oceans

Oil, gas and coal are contaminating the world’s oceans from top to bottom, threatening the lives of more than 800 million people, a new study warns Tuesday.

“It took a year to analyse and synthesise all of the studies on the impacts of climate change on ocean species,” Camilo Mora, an ecologist at University of Hawai‘i in Honolulu and lead author, told IPS.

“We are seeing greater changes, happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated.” — Alex Rogers of the University of Oxford

Plankton Death To Come with Acid Oceans and Sunlight

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.

sea-anemone

Deep CO2 Cuts May Be Last Hope for Acid Oceans

(Report from the World Oceans Conference in Indonesia, May 2009)

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 Passing Critical CO2 Threshold

An apparent rapid upswing in ocean acidity in recent years is wiping out coastal species like mussels, a new study has found.

“We’re seeing dramatic changes,” said Timothy Wootton of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, lead author of the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study shows increases in ocean acidity that are more than 10 times faster than any prediction.

Say Goodbye to Coral Reefs

GIJON, Spain, May 22 (IPS) – The one-two punch of climate change that is warming ocean temperatures and increasing acidification is making the oceans uninhabitable for corals and other marine species, researchers said at a scientific symposium in Spain.

noaa

Lose Corals and We Will be Fighting for Our Own Survival

“There would be no white sands on the beaches of Cancún without the Mesoamerican reef,” Professor Roberto Iglesias-Prieto, a marine ecophysiologist working at the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Tierramérica.

Cutting CO2 Could Save Dying Corals

FORT LAUDERDALE, U.S., Jul 12 (IPS) – The rapid decline of coral reefs around the world offers a potent warning that entire ecosystems can collapse due to human activities, although there is hope for reefs if immediate action is taken, coral experts agreed at the conclusion of a five-day international meeting Friday.severely-degraded-reef-flat-at-kelso-reef-great-barrier-reef-australiaimage-c2a9-cathie-page-very-sml2

A Third of Corals Face Extinction

FORT LAUDERDALE, U.S., Jul 10 (IPS) – One third of reef-building corals already face extinction because of climate change, the first-ever global assessment has found.

Life Support Needed For Coral Reefs

FORT LAUDERDALE, U.S., Jul 8 (IPS) – Coral reefs need to be put on “life support” if they are to survive climate change, but their ultimate survival is dependant on major reductions in fossil fuel emissions, say experts.

“We’re Running the Risk of Unstoppable Climate Change” — Oceanographer

“I’m afraid it is going to take a major catastrophe in the developed world…” Chris Reid.

Oceans are the Heart and Blood of the Earth — But are They Healthy?

If continents are the Earth’s sturdy bones and the atmosphere its thin skin, then the oceans are its heart, circulatory system and blood. And despite the crucial role played by the oceans in the health of the planet, and to our own health and well-being, there is little monitoring of ocean health.

Acid Oceans to ‘Dissolve’ Coral Reefs in 30 years

Coral reefs face certain extinction in a few decades unless there are unprecedented reductions in carbon emissions, leading Australian scientists warn.

Say Goodbye to Coral Reefs

Stephen Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, OCEAN , ,

severely-degraded-reef-flat-at-kelso-reef-great-barrier-reef-australiaimage-c2a9-cathie-page-very-sml

Coral reefs will be the first global ecosystem to collapse in our lifetimes.

By Stephen Leahy

GIJON, Spain, May 22 (IPS) – The one-two punch of climate change that is warming ocean temperatures and increasing acidification is making the oceans uninhabitable for corals and other marine species, researchers said at a scientific symposium in Spain.

And now other regions are being affected. Acidic or corrosive waters have been detected for the first time on the continental shelf of the west coast of North America, posing a serious threat to fisheries, Richard Feely, an oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told attendees in Gijon, Spain Wednesday.

More than 450 scientists from over 60 countries are participating in the “Effects of Climate Change on the World’s Oceans” symposium.

“Surface waters off the coast of San Francisco had concentrations of carbon dioxide that we didn’t expect to see for at least another 100 years,” Feely told IPS. Continue reading →

Lose Corals and We Will be Fighting for Our Own Survival

Stephen Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Mexico, News, OCEAN , , , , ,

Interview with Marine Scientist Roberto Iglesias-Prieto

By Stephen Leahy

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida, U.S., Jul 31 (Tierramérica)

“There would be no white sands on the beaches of Cancún without the Mesoamerican reef,” Professor Roberto Iglesias-Prieto, a marine ecophysiologist working at the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Tierramérica.

Tourism is Mexico’s third leading source of revenue, and the country needs to invest much more in protecting its valuable coral systems, says the expert. But to explain the problems that coral reefs face “it is not enough to be an ecologist; one has to be an economist and political scientist as well,” he adds.

The Mesoamerican reef, which is off the Yucatán Peninsula and is shared by Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, extends 1,100 kilometres, making it the largest in the Atlantic Ocean and the second largest in the world, after the Great Barrier Reef east of Australia.

Corals are crucial for the health of oceans and are home to 25 to 33 percent of marine life. The livelihoods of one billion people rely on coral reefs, directly or indirectly.

But the reefs are dying as a result of excessive fishing, pollution and climate change, which is heating up the water and causing acidification.

Few coral reefs will be healthy beyond 2050 if significant reductions in emissions from the burning of fossil fuels do not occur in the near term, most experts in this field agree.

Tierramérica’s Stephen Leahy spoke with Iglesias-Prieto during the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in July in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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Continue reading →

Global Fish Catches Vastly Underestimated

Stephen ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, OCEAN ,

By Stephen Leahy

FORT LAUDERDALE, U.S., Jul 8 (IPS) – Fish catches in tropical island nations may be as much as 17 times higher than officially reported, according to a new study released Tuesday.

“The underreporting of fish catches is of such a magnitude it boggles the mind,” said Daniel Pauly, a renowned fisheries expert at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

All of the 20 small Pacific island countries in the study underreported catches, mainly because they did not count the catch by small-scale local fishers. This is not unique — even the U.S. does not report local and recreational fishing statistics, Pauly told IPS at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Tuesday.

A different study also released Tuesday estimates that the unreported recreational fish catch in the Hawaiian Islands doubles the size of the official catch. It also concluded that 75 percent of reef fishes in the main Hawaiian Islands are depleted or in critical condition because of overfishing. Continue reading →

Life Support Needed For Coral Reefs

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News, OCEAN , ,

By Stephen Leahy


FORT LAUDERDALE, U.S., Jul 8 (IPS) – Coral reefs need to be put on “life support” if they are to survive climate change, but their ultimate survival is dependant on major reductions in fossil fuel emissions, say experts.

“We’re going to hear lots of bad news about corals in the next few decades,” Rich Aronson, president of the International Society for Reef Studies, told 3,000 scientists, conservationists and policy makers at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Monday.

Climate change is making the ocean too warm and too acidic for most corals species to survive beyond the year 2050, many marine scientists now believe.

“The situation is serious to the point of desperation,” Aronson told IPS in an interview.

Past and present carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels have already altered the oceans, leading to declines in corals in many areas. This trend will continue for decades even if it were possible to eliminate all emissions today, scientists say. Current emissions are running at eight to nine gigatonnes a year and rising, resulting in dramatically altered oceans where few of the current coral species will be able to survive.

“This is a pivotal moment. We must act strongly and immediately if we are to have coral reefs as we know them,” Aronson said. Continue reading →

Acid Oceans to ‘Dissolve’ Coral Reefs in 30 years

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Indigenous People, News, OCEAN, Science , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Nov 12, 2007 (IPS)

Coral reefs face certain extinction in a few decades unless there are unprecedented reductions in carbon emissions, leading Australian scientists warn.

Corals around the world may be nothing but rubble before a child born today turns 30 years old, and almost certainly before they’re 50.

The reason? Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere are turning the oceans acidic far faster than previously observed.

“It isn’t just the coral reefs which are affected. A large part of the plankton in the Southern Ocean, the coccolithophorids, are also affected,” said Malcolm McCulloch, an environmental research scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra.

[Update Sept 2010 – wide spread coral bleaching reported;  What if our air was 30% more acidic like the Oceans? May be 120% more acidic by 2060]

“These (coccolithophorids) drive ocean productivity and are the base of the food web which supports krill, whales, tuna and our fisheries,” McCulloch said in a statement. Continue reading →