The science academies of 70 nations addressed the opening of the climate talks in Bonn today concerning the seriousness of emission cuts required to keep ocean acidity under control. From the statement: Ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years; At current emission rates models suggest that all coral…
A team of 32 scientists have released a report that summarized 48 research project covering 318 reefs and 273 reef fish species during the period 1955-2007. The decline started about 1995. The scientists say the half of the fish species groups studied are decreasing at 2.6 to 6% loss per year. This loss rate is…
March 23, 2009 Just a little known fact here to make your life a little more accurate. Recent studies have found that the ocean’s pH has changed from 8.16 to 8.05 since the Industrial revolution. This is 100 times faster than normal, but it just doesn’t look like much until one understands the significance of…
A study in Science on the 13th shows a 12% average decline in ocean productivity along the western Antarctic Peninsula in the last 30 years. Temperatures have increased here 4.6 times the global average. In the last few years of the study (beginning about the time the Big Melt began in Greenland – about 2004)…
Deep waters in the Antarctic account for twice as much deep water formation in the oceans compared to North Atlantic deep waters. The temperature of Antarctic deep water is warming and the surface waters of the Antarctic ocean are freshening. Both of these things are likely caused by increased Antarctic melt and a slowing of…
Ocean acidity increases with atmospheric CO2 concentration. Since the turn of the 21st century, ocean acidity has caused a decrease of carbon concentration in the exoskeletons of the primary productivity organisms of the oceans. This means, not only are this fundamentally important part of the ocean system at risk, but the oceans are not absorbing…
Monaco Declaration Press Release: Urgent action is needed to limit damages to marine ecosystems, including coral reefs and fisheries, due to increasing ocean acidity, according to 155 of the world’s scientific experts who will release the Monaco Declaration this Friday. The Declaration is based on results from the Second International Symposium on the Ocean in…
Not in the Great Southern Ocean, but from an eight year study off the coast of Washington State. The seas around Antarctica are proceeding 60 years ahead of schedule. The implication so ocean acidification are grave. Primary productivity is one of really important things on this planet. The oceans are really big and primary productivity…
Senator John Kerry said that president-elect Obama would lead world in the negotiations of a successor agreement to Kyoto in the coming year. The BBC News had this to say about Kerry’s comments: The senator said that none of the numbers on the table – the EU’s 20% by 2020, the US return to 1990…
