climate change tagged posts

Since the 1970s, more than 93% of excess heat captured by greenhouse gases has been absorbed by the oceans. To understand how much heat that is, think of it this way: If the oceans weren’t absorbing it, average global temperatures on land would be far higher—around 122°F, according to researchers on the documentary Chasing Coral. The global average surface temperature right now is 59°F.

A 122°F world, needless to say, would be unlivable. More than 93% of climate change is out of sight and out of mind for most of us land-dwelling humans, but as the oceans continue to onboard all that heat, they’re becoming unlivable themselves.

Ocean temperatures are the highest since record-keeping began, and hundreds of marine species are suffering because of it...

The island nation of Fiji hosted the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn last week, bringing attention to the plight of small islands under climate change. Fiji is already facing migration of its people, loss of coral reefs, and more intense cyclones such as the one last year that wiped out a third of its GDP.  Fiji is also home to the Great Sea Reef, the third longest continuous barrier reef in the world.

All the countries in the world except the U.S. have now backed the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to keep climate change below 2 degrees of warming and strive for 1.5 degrees.  However, to save coral reefs the world needs to meet the more ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees, a level at which around a third of coral reefs may survive...

If the risk of losing the Great Barrier Reef wasn’t bad enough, a new study has found that climate change could have a devastating impact on the fish populations of the Pacific Islands. A new study by the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program has found that Pacific Island Nations could lose between 50-80% of all marine species in their waters in the ocean continues to heat up.

The reason the impact is so severe is precisely because of its location. The waters in the Pacific are some of the warmest in the world, and they’re also some of the most constant – it usually feels like summer all year round.

It is because of this seasonal stability that even the smallest changes in water temperature can have such a vast impact on the marine life that resides there.

“Under climate change, the Pacif...

Predictions of the death of the Great Barrier Reef are wide of the mark, according to one of the most prominent researchers in the field. Marine biologist David Bourne from James Cook University says global warming and other pressures will not end up destroying the reef – but will instead bring about major changes in biodiversity.

“There is always going to be winners and losers,” he says. “The reef is still going to be there, it just may be a very different reef to what we have today.”

And perhaps the key element in determining which species of coral thrive and which suffer in the reef’s future might be bacteria.

Bourne says the volcanic seeps in Papua New Guinea dramatically affect the diversity of coral reef species...

The researchers from UWA, the ARC Centre of Excellence and WA Marine Science Institution found Ningaloo Reef, which is still recovering from major bleaching in 2010-11, was not affected.

The 2016 global bleaching event was the third and longest on record and the Kimberley region was the hardest hit.

Between March and May 2016, the world’s oceans were 0...

Cool-water corals can adapt to a slightly warmer ocean, but only if global greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. That’s according to a study published November 1 in the journal Science Advances of genetic adaptation and the likely effects of future warming on tabletop corals in the Cook Islands.

The study found that some corals in the normally cool waters of the Cook Islands carry genetic variants that predispose them to heat tolerance. This could help the population adapt more quickly to rising temperatures. But the preliminary results show they may not adapt quickly enough to outpace climate change.

“These corals aren’t going to adapt at an unlimited rate,” said lead author Rachael Bay, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis...

During the period of global warming at the close of the last ice age, Earth’s sea level did not rise steadily but rather in sharp, punctuated bursts when the planet’s glaciers melted, researchers report.

The researchers found fossil evidence in drowned reefs offshore Texas that showed sea level rose in several bursts ranging in length from a few decades to one century.

“What these fossil reefs show is that the last time Earth warmed like it is today, sea level did not rise steadily,” says coauthor André Droxler, a marine geologist from Rice University. “Instead, sea level rose quite fast, paused, and then shot up again in another burst and so on.

“This has profound implications for the future study of sea-level rise,” he says.

Because scientists did not previously have speci...

The recent international Ocean’s conference in New York culminated with a strong global commitment to “conserve and sustainably use our oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

Oceans generate around half of all oxygen or “every second breathe” we take. How we move forward to protect, conserve and sustainably use this precious resource will affect all 7.5 billion people on earth. All our lives depend on it.

The geography of the Pacific region makes SDG 14 on “Life below Water” essential to all development in the Pacific...

Rising temperatures caused by climate change would be catastrophic for countries in Asia and the Pacific by the end of the century – unless countries work to mitigate it, says a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) released last month. The report titled “A Region at Risk: The Human Dimensions of Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific” says that under a “business-as-usual” approach to climate change, the impacts for the Asia and Pacific region are catastrophic.

With climate change, food production in the region will become a lot more difficult, causing production costs to increase.

According to a data summary, crops in the Pacific region will be in decline by 2050...

Countries with responsibility over world heritage-listed coral reefs should adopt ambitious climate change targets, aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions to levels that would keep global temperature increases to just 1.5C, the UN agency responsible for overseeing world heritage sites has said.

At a meeting of Unesco’s world heritage committee in Kraków, Poland, a decision was adopted that clarified and strengthened the responsibility of countries that have custodianship over world-heritage listed coral reefs.

Until now, most countries have interpreted their responsibility over such reefs as implying they need to protect them from local threats such as water pollution and overfishing.

But between 2014 and 2017, reefs in every major reef region bleached, with much of the coral dying, in ...