ApocaDocuments (5) matching "ocean acidification" from this week
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Sun, Aug 1, 2010
from Seattle Times:
Oysters a sign of trouble from Puget Sound acidity
Pacific oysters in the wild on Washington's coast haven't reproduced in six seasons. Scientists suspect ocean-chemistry changes linked to the fossil-fuel emissions that cause global warming are helping kill these juvenile shellfish.
The oceans are becoming more acidic, and that corrosive water is finding its way into Puget Sound.
No one knows how it will impact the Sound's sea life. But scientists in laboratories around the globe increasingly find corrosive water can alter marine systems in strange, subtle and sometimes worrisome ways. ...
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The whole planet's losing its sex drive!
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Fri, Jul 30, 2010
from LiveScience, via DesdemonaDespair:
Oceans May Be Primed for Mass Extinction
The Gulf and the rest of the world's waters also face the uncertain and potentially devastating effects of climate change. Warming ocean temperatures reduce the water's oxygen content, and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is altering the basic chemistry of the ocean, making it more acidic. There is no shortage of evidence that both of these effects have begun to wreak havoc on certain important creatures.... "Today the synergistic effects of human impacts are laying the groundwork for a comparably great Anthropocene mass extinction in the oceans, with unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences...". When it comes to the oceans, research shows a parallel to the Permian-Triassic extinction -- also known as the Great Dying -- which eradicated 95 percent of marine species when the oceans lost their oxygen about 250 million years ago.
The same phenomenon is taking place in many areas of today's oceans.... "If current trends continue, the extinctions of the coming decades will be clearly visible to future geologists comparable in scale to the great extinction events in Earth's history," he wrote. "I think it will be an enigmatic extinction. Future geologists will try to figure out why we apparently tried to kill off so many species, but they will find it hard to believe that simple reason is stupidity." ...
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It's not that we're stupid. It's that we know we're the king of the world.
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Thu, Jul 29, 2010
from New Scientist:
Phytoplankton [and more] in decline: bye bye food chain
Ocean life is being wiped out from the bottom up. The global population of microscopic plants that float in ocean water and support most marine life has declined by 1 per cent every year since 1899.... Whatever the cause, it's a remarkably bad piece of news, because although phytoplankton are neither glamorous nor cute, the entire ocean food chain depends on them.... [Corals] are threatened by changing ocean temperatures and ocean acidification, both triggered by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions.
[Key saproxylic beetles in] Europe, at least, 24 per cent are under threat, and we would miss them if they went.
Similarly, insects such as butterflies and bees that pollinate plants are probably in decline (though the data are far from complete).
And fungi have barely been assessed at all, but along with bacteria they are the organisms that do the lion's share of decomposition, which is whiffy but essential.
In other words, never mind the pandas: it's plankton, bugs and fungi you should be worrying about. ...
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We are the food chain's weakest link.
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Wed, Jul 28, 2010
from Dalhousie University via ScienceDaily:
Marine Phytoplankton Declining: Striking Global Changes at the Base of the Marine Food Web Linked to Rising Ocean Temperatures
A new article published in the 29 July issue of the journal Nature reveals for the first time that microscopic marine algae known as "phytoplankton" have been declining globally over the 20th century. Phytoplankton forms the basis of the marine food chain and sustains diverse assemblages of species ranging from tiny zooplankton to large marine mammals, seabirds, and fish. Says lead author Daniel Boyce, "Phytoplankton is the fuel on which marine ecosystems run. A decline of phytoplankton affects everything up the food chain, including humans."... documented phytoplankton declines of about 1 percent of the global average per year. This trend is particularly well documented in the Northern Hemisphere and after 1950, and would translate into a decline of approximately 40 percent since 1950. The scientists found that long-term phytoplankton declines were negatively correlated with rising sea surface temperatures and changing oceanographic conditions. ...
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Does this mean I won't be able to get my Phytoplankton Krispies?
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Mon, Jul 26, 2010
from Scientific American:
Ancient Ocean Acidification Intimates Long Recovery from Climate Change
Of course the present era is hardly the first time the planet has seen higher levels of CO2. In fact, roughly 121 million years ago--during an age known as the early Aptian--global CO2 levels were likely higher than 800 ppm (and possibly as high as 2,000 ppm) thanks to cataclysmic volcanic eruptions. Now new research published in Science July 23 shows how ancestors of today's nannoplankton fared in those acidic oceans of long ago.
It was a time of "severe global warming," paleobiologist Elisabetta Erba of the University of Milan and her colleagues wrote, after studying the carbon isotopes embedded in deep seabed cores drilled in the Pacific Ocean and locations in the ancient Tethys Ocean, which existed during the Mesozoic era. The records reveal that acidification proved a big problem for nannoplankton. "During the Aptian episode, marine calcifiers experienced a major crisis due to increasing CO2-induced acidification," Erba says.
But that crisis was not a major extinction event. The nannoplankton responded by doing less shell-forming--the heaviest shell-formers, known as nannoconids, largely disappeared from the fossil record (although they did not go extinct, the same species reappear after acidification dwindles)--and by diversifying into new, smaller species. In some cases species even increased in abundance but shrank in size--by as much as 60 percent. "Malformation is also ascertained for some [widespread] species," Erba notes. It took at least 25,000 years for the new acidity levels reached in the surface waters to transfer to deeper waters, according to the research -- and the ocean took 75,000 years to reach its peak acidity for that episode, as well as at least 160,000 years to recover.... Regardless, the shells of at least one modern foraminifera in the Southern Ocean are already smaller than those of their ancestors from a mere century ago. And the modern buildup of atmospheric CO2 is happening far faster than these ancient episodes. "The current rate of ocean acidification is about a hundred times faster than the most rapid events" in the geologic past..." ...
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We're even worse than volcanoes?
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