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Dramatic charts reveal climate change’s effects on oceans

by c7u433n Posted on October 16, 2013

Dramatic charts reveal climate change’s effects on oceans

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What’s going on out there?

Climate change is scrambling the oceans. It’s raising water temperatures, lowering pH levels, reducing oxygen availability, and driving down the size of wildlife populations the oceans can sustain.

A study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Biology painstakingly chronicles many of the consequences of marine changes that the researchers describe as “unprecedented” during the last 20 million years:

Our results suggest that the entire world’s ocean surface will be simultaneously impacted by varying intensities of ocean warming, acidification, oxygen depletion, or shortfalls in productivity. Only a very small fraction of the oceans, mostly in polar regions, will face the opposing effects of increases in oxygen or productivity, and almost nowhere will there be cooling or pH increase. …

The social ramifications are also likely to be massive and challenging as some 470 to 870 million people – who can least afford dramatic changes to their livelihoods – live in areas where ocean goods and services could be compromised by substantial changes in ocean biogeochemistry.

It’s not all bad, according to the international team of researchers. Take a look at this chart from the study revealing cumulative net benefits expected by the year 2100 from changes in oceanic temperature (oC), oxygen content (O2), acidity level (pH), and productivity (Pr):

PLOS BiologyCumulative benefits of biogeochemical changes in the oceans to the year 2100. Click to embiggen.

Ah, that was kinda nice, wasn’t it. But if you want to stay in that happy place be sure to not look at the next chart, which, for comparison, reveals the cumulative negative consequences of all those biogeochemical changes:

PLOS BiologyCumulative negative impacts of biogeochemical changes in the oceans to the year 2100. Click to embiggen.

Yikes, that thing has more warning colors than a poison dart frog.

We’ll leave the final word for the researchers: “These results underline the need for urgent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions if degradation of marine ecosystems and associated human hardship are to be prevented.”


Source
Biotic and Human Vulnerability to Projected Changes in Ocean Biogeochemistry over the 21st Century, PLOS Biology

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Dramatic charts reveal climate change’s effects on oceans

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Abandoned Russian farmland soaks up 50 million tons of carbon every year

by AntonioRe Posted on October 4, 2013

Abandoned Russian farmland soaks up 50 million tons of carbon every year

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An abandoned grain processor that dates back to Soviet era.

When the USSR collapsed, the communal farming systems that helped feed the union’s citizens collapsed with it. Farmers abandoned 1 million acres of farmland and headed into the cities in search of work.

New research by European scientists has revealed the staggering climate benefits of that sweeping change in land use. According to the study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, wild vegetation growing on former USSR farming lands has sucked up approximately 50 million tons of carbon every year since 1990.

New Scientist reports that’s equivalent to 10 percent of Russia’s yearly fossil fuel carbon emissions:

“Everything like this makes a difference,” says Jonathan Sanderman, a soil chemist at CSIRO Land and Water in Australia. “Ten per cent is quite a bit considering most nations are only committed to 5 per cent reduction targets. So by doing absolutely nothing — by having depressed their economy — they’ve achieved quite a bit.”

He says the abandoned farmland is probably the largest human-made carbon sink, but notes it came at the cost of enormous social and economic hardship.

Modelling the effect into the future, [study co-author Irina] Kurganova estimates that, since the land has remained uncultivated, another 261 million tonnes will be sequestered over the next 30 years. At this point, the landscape will reach equilibrium, with the same amount of carbon escaping into the atmosphere as is being taken up.

The finding is a stark reminder of how Earth does a bang-up job of soaking up carbon if we leave more of it undeveloped and un-farmed.


Source
Fall of USSR locked up world’s largest store of carbon, New Scientist
Carbon cost of collective farming collapse in Russia, Global Change Biology

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Abandoned Russian farmland soaks up 50 million tons of carbon every year

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As climate changes, polar bears switch to polluted food

by Jim Thorpe Posted on September 23, 2013

As climate changes, polar bears switch to polluted food

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Visit Greenland

A harp seal and her pup: adorable but chemical-laced prey for polar bears.

A warming world is a cruel world for polar bears. Not only is their terrain melting beneath their feet. Now comes news that climate change is pushing East Greenland’s population to switch prey and increasingly eat types of seals that are loaded with chemical contaminants.

Polar bears living in East Greenland feed mainly on ringed seals, harp seals, and hooded seals. They may all sound the same to inexperienced seal-meat eaters like you and me. But these species of seals have different lifestyles that lead to different levels of chemical pollution in their meat.

Scientists studied the dietary habits of East Greenland’s polar bears from 1984 to 2011 and discovered a 42 percent fall in the amount of relatively clean ringed seal that they ate. In its place, the bears substituted more harp and hooded seals — species whose flesh contain higher levels of long-lived contaminants known as persistent organic pollutants. That’s because these species of seals, which are larger than ringed seals, are higher up in the food chains. It’s also because they are “subarctic” seals — they travel further south, closer to the industrialized world, where they swim and feed in more human-produced filth.

The scientists believe the changing diet is climate-related, in part because the dietary changes were most stark in the warmest years.

“Our results suggest that [East Greenland] bears are using subarctic seals as an increasingly important, albeit more contaminated, food resource,” the researchers wrote in a paper published recently in the journal Global Change Biology. “A shifting diet may have health consequences.”

Yuck, time to get those dirty seals out of your diets, polar bears!

Or not. The good news here is also the bad news. As Arctic sea ice continues to melt, the bears will find it harder to hunt the harp and hooded seals, which use the ice as pup-rearing platforms. And once that contaminated source of food has dried up, it could become frightfully difficult for the bears to find any food at all.

“This additional food source, subsequent to declines in ringed seal in the diet, may only be a temporary one,” the scientists wrote.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Thousands of Dolphins And Whales Will Get in the Way of the Navy’s Bombs, Says the Navy

by Micheal Bay Posted on August 30, 2013

Photo: St. Petersburg / Clearwater

A pair of reports put out by the Navy today outline how the Navy is going to “inadvertently kill hundreds of whales and dolphins and injure thousands over the next five years,” says the Associated Press, “mostly as a result of detonating explosives underwater.”

On top of the underwater bombings, the Navy says that its “testing and training” exercises are also probably going to temporarily deafen millions of marine critters. The detrimental effects of sonar on whales and dolphins has been a controversial topic for the past decade or so, since at least 2001 when another Navy report found that sonar had contributed to the deaths of “at least six whales.”

The Navy does the bulk of its training in four places: off the East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and off Southern California and Hawaii, and it would like to continue doing so. But, in order to get the permit it needs to do field training for the next five years, the Navy has to study how its activities could affect marine life. That’s where these new environmental impact assessments came from.

For their part, an official blog post from the Navy says that they are very sorry not sorry for the forthcoming deaths and deafenings:

Active sonar operation and underwater explosive ordnance handling are perishable skills that require training at sea under realistic conditions that cannot be replicated by simulation alone. Newly developed systems and ordnance also must be tested in the same conditions under which they will be operated. Without this realistic training and testing, our Sailors cannot develop and maintain the critical skills they need or ensure that new technology can be operated effectively.

We have proactively coordinated with regulatory agencies and adopted their suggestions for standard operating procedures to protect marine species and the environment wherever possible, such as using trained lookouts to avoid marine mammals while underway and ramping down or halting sonar if marine mammals approach our ships within certain safety zones. With the care and diligence of Sailors like you, we have been able to protect marine life without jeopardizing our ability to conduct essential training and testing.

“Rear Adm. Kevin Slates, the Navy’s energy and environmental readiness division director, told reporters this week the Navy uses simulators where possible but sailors must test and train in real-life conditions.” – AP

More from Smithsonian.com:

Navy’s Plan To Go Green Is Falling Apart
Navy Dolphins Turn Up a Rare 19th-Century Torpedo
The Navy’s Future Is Filled With Laser Guns

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Thousands of Dolphins And Whales Will Get in the Way of the Navy’s Bombs, Says the Navy

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Climate Change Is Sending Marine Life to the Poles in Search of Colder Waters

by london Posted on August 6, 2013

Many marine creatures, including whale sharks, are expect to move closer to the planet’s poles as the ocean waters warm because of climate change. Photo: Noodlefish

According to a new study, led by Australian researcher Elvira Poloczanska, marine creatures are heading to the poles. Of all the extra energy trapped on Earth because of global warming, more than 80 percent of it has gone into the world’s oceans. And the animals that live there? They’ve noticed. They’re swimming towards the poles, heading for colder waters, as the ocean warms around them.

Most studies looking at how changing ocean temperatures are affecting marine life have focused on specific animals or specific places, often over a limited time period. Poloczanska and her team were interested in a bigger view, so they pulled together all the information they could find—208 different studies, looking at 1,735 different populations of a total 857 different species of marine animal. (And, for the haters out there, the scientists “included responses irrespective of whether they were consistent with expectations under climate change or not, as well as null responses.”)

Then they looked for big picture trends.

Not every animal that was studied is responding to climate change, they found, but around 82 percent are. And those animals are moving. The team found that, because of climate change, the ranges of these animals are growing towards the poles at around 45 miles per decade, on average. The more mobile critters, like fish and phytoplankton, are moving at around 172 and 292 miles per decade, respectively. This is way, way faster than the 3.75 miles per decade on average that land animals are moving to escape the heat.

So, climate change is here, and the marine critters have noticed. What happens next is the big question. After all, what happens when you tug on the threads of the food web? Poloczanska and her colleagues sum it up:

In conclusion, recent climate studies show that patterns of warming of the upper layers of the world’s oceans are significantly related to greenhouse gas forcing. Global responses of marine species revealed here demonstrate a strong fingerprint of this anthropogenic climate change on marine life. Differences in rates of change with climate change amongst species and populations suggest species’ interactions and marine ecosystem functions may be substantially reorganized at the regional scale, potentially triggering a range of cascading effects.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Warming, Rising Acidity and Pollution: Top Threats to the Ocean
A Warming Climate Is Turning the Arctic Green
2012 Saw the Second Highest Carbon Emissions in Half a Century

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Climate Change Is Sending Marine Life to the Poles in Search of Colder Waters

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Instead of Being Protected, Antarctica’s Oceans Will Be Open for Fishing

by John Basset Posted on July 17, 2013

A Weddell Seal sunbathes near Antarctica’s Ross Sea. Photo: Leonardo Sagnotti

As Antarctica is undergoing massive changes—in its climate, because of rapidly melting ice shelves, and in its biology, because invasive species are moving into the warming waters—it’s also playing a new role in scientists’ understanding of how life on Earth gets by. The continent was long thought to be a mostly barren wasteland, home to penguins and seals and little else, but recent investigations in the surrounding oceans and in lakes deep beneath the glaciers have turned up a wealth of new life—a trove of thriving species likely found nowhere else on Earth.

Recognizing Antarctica’s status as one of the last largely untapped ecosystems on Earth, many members of an international government consortium, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), have been pushing hard to have 963 million acres of the Southern Ocean set off as a protected reserve. Pew Environment writes:

The proposed Southern Ocean protections included a Ross Sea marine reserve of 1.6 million square kilometres — where no fishing would be allowed — within a 2.3 million square kilometre marine protected area, and seven marine protected areas on the East Antarctic coast, covering an additional 1.6 million square kilometres. The Ross Sea plan was proposed by the United States and New Zealand; the East Antarctic protections were championed by Australia, France, and the E.U.

Scientists, say Pew, have “called the Ross Sea ‘The least altered marine ecosystem on Earth,’ with unusually large and closely interacting populations of several marine bird and mammal species.”

The Southern Ocean is home to thousands of unique species including most of the world’s penguins, whales, seabirds, colossal squid, and the remarkable but heavily fished Antarctic and Patagonian toothfish. The region is critical for scientific research, both for studying how intact marine ecosystems function and for determining the accelerating impacts of global climate change.

Unfortunately for those arguing for greater protections (which included representatives from the United States), the plan to set the Southern Ocean regions aside, free from fishing and other enterprises, has been nixed. At a meeting organized to discuss the plan, says Nature, a “surprise legal objection from Russian diplomats” stalled the plan.

[T]he Russian delegation questioned the very authority of the Commission for the Conservation on Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which regulates fishing in Antarctica, to create reserves.

… This has enraged NGOs, who pointed out that CCAMLR has already created one such ‘marine protected area’ and that all of the commission’s members had previously agreed in principle that it should create such zones. NGO representatives accused Russia of coming in bad faith to the meeting, which was convened specifically to discuss the marine reserves after they were not agreed to at another meeting last year.

With no legal restrictions in place, fisheries would be free to act in the Southern Ocean. Indeed, fishing has been a “major sticking point in the talks,” says the BBC:

[S]pecies like krill and patagonian toothfish prov[e] highly lucrative for boats from a range of countries, including South Korea, Norway and Japan.

The tiny shrimp like Antarctic krill are a key element of the ecosystem, as they are part of the diet of whales, penguins, seals and sea birds.

However demand for krill has risen sharply in recent years thanks to growing interest in Omega-3 dietary supplements.

The group, says Der Spiegel, plans to meet once more in October to discuss the marine protected area. “Although there is hope that they may be approved there,” says Nature, “Russia’s hardline approach to this week’s meeting casts a long shadow, and raises serious doubts about the chances of approval.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

‘Bone-Eating Zombie Worm’ And Eight Other New Species Live on the First Whale Skeleton Found in Antarctica
Thousands of Species Found in a Lake Cut Off From the World for Millions of Years
There Goes the Ecosystem: Alien Animals Invade Antarctica

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Instead of Being Protected, Antarctica’s Oceans Will Be Open for Fishing

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Dogs Have Terrible Eyesight: See for Yourself

by Larissaiyb Posted on July 10, 2013

“Waterloo” by C. M. Coolidge. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Sorry, C. M. Coolidge, but man’s best friend would probably really suck at poker. For one, dogs can’t see red. Two, their vision is so awful that they’d probably have trouble even making out the numbers.

See for yourself: WolframAlpha, every nerd’s favorite search engine, has a web app that lets you look at life through a dogs’ eyes.

See what we mean? Photo: WolframAlpha

Where people have three specialized receptors in our eyes to distinguish colors, dogs only have two: this leaves them red-green color blind (we think). Life’s Little Mysteries:

To see blue and yellow, dogs and humans alike rely on neurons inside the eye’s retina. These neurons are excited in response to yellow light detected in the cone cells (which are also inside the retina), but the neurons’ activity gets suppressed when blue light hits the cones. A dog’s brain interprets the excitation or suppression of these neurons as the sensation of yellow or blue, respectively. However, in dogs and color-blind individuals, red light and green light both have a neutral effect on the neurons. With no signal to interpret these colors, the dogs’ brains don’t perceive any color. Where you see red or green, they see shades of gray.

“A human would be missing the sensations of red and green,” Neitz told Life’s Little Mysteries . “But whether or not the dog’s sensations are missing red and green, or if their brains assign colors differently, is unclear.”

Aside from the color issue, dogs’ sight is pretty bad. Using a custom eye test for dogs, researchers have found that dogs basically have 20/75 vision compared to a person’s 20/20 vision, says Psychology Today.

To give you a feeling about how poor this vision is, you should know that if your visual acuity is worse than 20/40 you would fail the standard vision test given when you apply for a driver’s license in the United States and would be required to wear glasses. A dog’s vision is considerably worse than this.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Colorful Kindergarten Lessons Throw Color-Blind Kids Off Their Game
Was Vincent van Gogh Color Blind? It Sure Looks Like It

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Dogs Have Terrible Eyesight: See for Yourself

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Thousands of Species Found in a Lake Cut Off From the World for Millions of Years

by bvds34dfsg Posted on July 8, 2013

Lake Vostok lies beneath 2.4 miles of the Antarctic Eastern Ice Sheet. Photo: NASA / GSFC

In a lake cut off from the world for maybe as much as 15 million years, beneath 2.4 miles of Antarctic glacier ice, scientists have discovered as many as 3,507 different species representing everything from bacteria and fungi to, maybe, even more complex multicellular life.

In 1956, Russian scientists set up the Vostok research station on a relatively flat patch of ice in the heart of Antarctica’s eastern ice sheet. Research soon showed that the reason the terrain was so smooth was because the camp was resting far above a giant lake—subglacial Lake Vostok. Starting around 35 million years ago, ancient climate change turned Antarctica from a green landscape into an icy one. The change in climate trapped Lake Vostok beneath the growing East Antarctic Ice Sheet, and, as the sea receded, the lake was cut off from the ocean.

Two decades ago, Russian scientists began the long project of drilling down into Lake Vostok, a mission they finally completed in February 2012. With the drilling done, the work of trying to figure out if anything is alive down there began.

Scientists working with water from Lake Vostok have found genetic material that they think represents up to 3,507 different species, they report in a recent paper. The genetic material came from lake water that had frozen to the bottom of the Antarictic glacier. Comparing the genetic material against a database of species from around the world that have had their genes sequenced the scientists say that more than a thousand of these line up with known lifeforms. The identified species were mostly bacteria, though there were also some eukaryotes (mostly fungi), and there were two species of archaea. NBC’s Alan Boyle describes what the genes might mean:

The sequences included close matches for various types of fungi as well as arthropods, springtails, water fleas and a mollusk. What’s more, some of the bacteria from the sample are typically found in fish guts — suggesting that the fish they came from may be swimming around in the lake.

…”While the current conditions are different than earlier in its history, the lake seems to have maintained a surprisingly diverse community of organisms,” the researchers wrote. “These organisms may have slowly adapted to the changing conditions in Lake Vostok during the past 15-35 million years as the lake converted from a terrestrial system to a subglacial system.”

A significant number of the sequences were linked to organisms that live around deep-sea hydrothermal vents, suggesting that such features exist at the bottom of Lake Vostok as well. “Hydrothermal vents could provide sources of energy and nutrients vital for organisms living in the lake,” the researchers said.

One of the scientists who worked on the study, Scott Rogers, explained to NBC’s Boyle that the fact that other genetic sequences didn’t line up with anything we’ve seen before doesn’t necessarily mean that these are entirely new species living down in subglacial Lake Vostok. Rogers says that though some of the lifeforms down there will probably be brand new, some of them are probably just things we already know about but whose genes haven’t been studied in-depth and put in the particular database the researchers used.

If these findings hold up and if there is life in Lake Vostok that is truly unique on Earth, the finding would be a testament to the hardiness of life. It would be a reassurance that life can persist in some of the harshest conditions and an encouraging finding for those looking for life elsewhere in the universe.

More from Smithsonian.com:

No Life Found In Lakes Beneath Antarctic Glaciers—Yet
Brand New, Never Before Seen Bacteria Found in Frozen Antarctic Lake—Maybe

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Thousands of Species Found in a Lake Cut Off From the World for Millions of Years

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China’s Massive Algae Bloom Could Leave the Ocean’s Water Lifeless

by John Graham Posted on July 5, 2013

Algae in the Yellow Sea near Qingdao in 2008. Photo: MODIS Rapid Response Team / Earth Observatory

It’s become an annual affair, the rafts of green algae washing up on the shores of Qingdao, China. Since 2007, massive algae blooms in the Yellow Sea have been fueled, scientists think, by “pollution and increased seaweed farming” south of Qingdao. The mats of photosynthetic phytoplankton aren’t dangerous to people (unless you count ruining a day at the beach as dangerous), but the return of these massive algae blooms year after year could be troubling for the marine creatures living in the Yellow Sea.

“The carpet on the surface can dramatically change the ecology of the environment beneath it,” says the Guardian. “It blocks sunlight from entering the ocean and sucks oxygen from the water suffocating marine life.”

Vast blooms of algae can cause the water to become “hypoxic,” to have the concentration of oxygen in the water drawn down so low that it makes it uninhabitable for many marine creatures. A strong case of hypoxia can further lead to something called a “dead zone.” And, by drawing down the oxygen levels and messing with the chemistry of the water, algae blooms can temporarily amplify ocean acidification. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains how algae blooms lead to dead zones:

Such recurring, annual algae blooms like the one in Qingdao aren’t limited to China’s Yellow Sea, either. According to Scientific American, there are at least 405 dead zones around the world. One of the worst in the world is the one in the Gulf of Mexico, where this year researchers with NOAA expect around 8,000 square miles of the Gulf to be oxygen depleted—a patch of ocean about the size of New Jersey, says National Geographic. If the bloom lives up to expectations, this year’s would be the largest dead zone in the Gulf on record.

So while China’s algae problem may be making a mess for swimmers, it’s the life beneath the waves that may be hurting the most.

More from Smithsonian.com:
A Swim Through the Ocean’s Future
Arctic Algae Infiltration Demonstrates the Effects of Climate Change

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China’s Massive Algae Bloom Could Leave the Ocean’s Water Lifeless

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Pesticides May Be Harmful to Animals Even at “Safe” Levels

by KetaHeadraf Posted on June 18, 2013

A Chinese farm worker sprays pesticides. Photo: IFPRI-Images

“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison: the dose alone makes a thing not poison.” The wisdom of Paracelsus, a 16th-century physician and alchemist, has formed the backbone of modern toxicology. There is a safe dose of radiation, and you can be poisoned by water. Some substances, like medicine, can be incredibly helpful at low levels but deadly at high ones. A modern toxicologist’s job is to find this line, and it’s a government’s job to put limits on exposure levels to keep everything safe.

For some compounds, however, the balance between safe and deadly may not be possible. The European Union seems to believe this is the case for one set of pesticides, the so-called neonicotinoids. The EU has recently banned their use. Writing for Nature, Sharon Oosthoek says that when it comes to certain pesticides, including these now-banned neonicotinoids, we may have missed the mark—at least in Europe and Australia.

Citing two recent studies, Oosthoek says that even when pesticides like neonicotinoids are used at a level that is deemed “safe,” there may still be deadly effects on local wildlife. Looking at streams in Germany, France and Australia, scientists found that “there were up to 42% fewer species in highly contaminated than in uncontaminated streams in Europe. Highly contaminated streams in Australia showed a decrease in the number of invertebrate families by up to 27% when contrasted with uncontaminated streams.” Pesticides can have outsized effects on some species, while others endure them just fine. And year-after-year applications can cause the pesticides to build up in the environment, making them deadly after a few years even if the amount sprayed each year is within guidelines. It’s not clear whether such strong losses are the case everywhere, but they were for the studied streams.

As Paracelsus taught us, there is a safe level for everything—even pesticides. The trick is finding the right balance such that we can still derive their benefits without the unintended consequences.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Another Downside to Your Classic Green Lawn
Crazy Lies Haters Threw at Rachel Carson

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Pesticides May Be Harmful to Animals Even at “Safe” Levels

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