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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 18 August 2010 In this tour, Ted Danson and Oceana guide you through the problems that the Arctic Ocean is facing due to climate change, and introduce you to the positive changes that have been made due [...] Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 26 July 2010 The icy Arctic waters around Norway’s archipelago of Svalbard may seem pristine and clear, but like the rest of the world’s oceans, they are facing the threat of growing acidity.  The European Centre for Arctic Environmental Research in Ny-Ålesund Oceans have always absorbed part of the carbon dioxide, or CO2, present in the air, which in turn makes them acid. But with CO2 levels soaring, the scientific community is getting worried about acidification harming marine life. Off the coast of Ny-Aalesund, a tiny coalmine village turned scientific outpost just 1 200km from the North Pole, researchers from nine European countries conducted in July an unprecedented effort to analyse the phenomenon. To do so, they submerged nine tubes, each weighing two tonnes and the height of two double-decker busses, in the icy waters of the remote fjord framed by snow-capped mountains. They then injected the watertight tubes, called mesocosms, with CO2, to reproduce sea life under different acidity levels expected from now until 2150 with the aim of studying the potentially disastrous effects of acidification on marine life. “It’s here in the Arctic that the ocean will become corrosive the fastest,” Jean-Pierre Gattuso, with France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, said, explaining why the researchers chose to turn these waters thick with icy slush into a laboratory. Continue reading Arctic faces growing threat of acidification Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 09 July 2010 New evidence suggesting sea levels will rise to double expected levels this century and that fewer baby fish will grow successfully to maturity in more acidified oceans underline the urgent need for decisive action on climate change, WWF said today [June 08 2010].  Early experiments using clown fish found them unable to find their way home in carbonated water. The Australian Earth Sciences Convention has heard that cores drilled up to two kilometres below the Antarctic ice have outlined an earth with a similar climate to the warmer earth projected in current climate assessments. The new evidence was presented by Professor Tim Naish, director of New Zealand’s Antarctic Research Centre, recently named a lead author for the next climate change assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It supports other recent modelling suggesting an average sea level rise this century of one metre or more – double the upper estimate issued by the IPCC. “Given many climate models predict the planet will warm by the same two to three degrees over the next 50 to 100 years, scientists need to urgently understand how temperature changes will affect the polar ice sheet and the speed of likely change,” Professor Naish said. “A couple of degrees of temperature change can lead to quite dramatic changes across the world.” Continue reading Sea levels will rise to double expected levels this century Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 22 June 2010 The world’s oceans are virtually choking on rising greenhouse gases, destroying marine ecosystems and breaking down the food chain — irreversible changes that have not occurred for several million years, a new study says.  Climate change is causing major declines in marine ecosystems The changes could have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people around the globe who rely on oceans for their livelihoods. “It’s as if the Earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day,” said the report’s lead author, Australian marine scientist Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. The Australia-US report published in Science magazine on Friday, studied 10 years of marine research and found that climate change was causing major declines in marine ecosystems. Oceans were rapidly warming and acidifying, water circulation was being altered and dead zones within the ocean depths were expanding, said the report. There has also been a decline in major ocean ecosystems like kelp forests and coral reefs and the marine food chain was breaking down, with fewer and smaller fish and more frequent diseases and pests among marine organisms. “If we continue down this pathway we get into conditions which have no analogue to anything we’ve experienced,” said Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland. Continue reading Irreversible changes choke world’s oceans Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 21 May 2010 Acidification of the oceans means “double trouble” for marine life from corals to shellfish since it is adding to stresses caused by global warming, a study showed on Wednesday.  Sea Butterfly. Picture: Kevin Raskoff, Hidden Ocean 2005 Expedition: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration. “The oceans are more acidic than they have ever been for at least 20 million years,” according to the report by the European Science Foundation. On current trends, seas could be 150% more acidic by 2100 than they were in pre-industrial times. Sea water is acidifying because carbon dioxide, released to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, is slightly corrosive in water. That makes it harder for creatures such as corals, lobsters, crabs or oysters to build their protective shells. “Ocean acidification…is double trouble because it is happening on top of global warming,” Jelle Bijma, lead author of the report and a professor at the Alred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, told Reuters. “Coastal zones such as in the Mediterranean and North Seas are rich in calcifying organisms such as shellfish that may be particularly sensitive to large changes in carbon chemistry,” a statement said. Seas have already become 30% more acidic in the past 200 years – the oceans have absorbed about 430 billion tons of carbon dioxide, or about one third of emissions by human activities since the Industrial Revolution. Continue reading Ocean acidification means double trouble for marine life |
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