Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Friday, March 21, 2008
The White House’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 restored a bit of good news for 3 of 5 key climate instruments crucial in tracking earth changes. CERES, a sensor to measure the Earth’s radiation, another instrument that tracks solar irradiance and the OMPS-Limb instrument (Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite) all received a sentence commute in the proposed 2009 budget.
The death sentence handed down to 2 other instruments intended to measure sea-surface temperatures and wind directions over the oceans were left twisting in the wind.
Given the fact that scientists, on a whole, generally behave in an unflappable manner hearing words and phrases such as; ‘alarm bells’, ‘borders on criminal negligence’,'devastating’, ‘grave jeopardy’ and ‘blinding’ do not evoke feelings of confidence in the future. Since blowing winds and sea-surface temperatures are two key ingredients increasing the dead zones in our oceans.
A panel of scientists at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Boston last month reported…Climate change is rapidly transforming the world’s oceans by increasing the temperature and acidity of seawater, and altering atmospheric and oceanic circulation…
In the past ocean dead zones could be attributed to fertilizers, farm run-off, and sewage which over fed phytoplankton which are eaten by bacteria when they die that use up the oxygen in the water. These dead zones in the past were more likely to be found in places where rivers run into the oceans like the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, but more dead zones are being found in the open oceans.
We need to have more ability to observe these growing dead zones, not less.
Image NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio
Labels: AAAS, Global Warming, NOAA, NPOESS, Ocean, Phytoplankton, ocean dead zone
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Ocean Dead Zones Observation Left Twisting In The Wind.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Like a rock-n-roll guitar player that stands too close to his amplifier, climate change is now creating a dreaded ‘feedback’ affect.
Loss of ice in the Arctic means less ‘white’ which reflects the sunshine back into space. In the summer we wear white or light colored clothing to reflect the heat of the sun away from us. In the winter we wear dark colors that absorb the heat. The tundra is melting absorbing more heat. The heat is rapidly decomposing plant material and in return releasing methane. Methane is over 20 times more potent than other greenhouse gases.
A study done at the University of East Anglia shows that the North Atlantic Ocean is only absorbing half of the C02 it once did, and southern oceans have stopped absorbing it, and are now releasing C02 back into the atmosphere.
The ocean’s ability to absorb C02 is called C02 sink. Merchant ships equipped with instruments to measure carbon dioxide (C02) in the water have been collecting data every month and have generated more than 90,000 measurements in just the past few years.
The North Atlantic Ocean’s ability to absorb C02 abruptly declined, while the Indian Ocean’s absorption ability was making more of a taper.
Emissions of carbon dioxide from the ocean have actually increased by 40% since 1981.
International team leader Dr. Corinne Le Quere, from the University of Eat Anglia and British Antarctic Survey says, “This is serious. All climate models predict that this kind of ‘feedback will continue and intensify during this century.”
See PSMI’s Franken-plankton story in the archive.
Labels: Arctic, Climate Change, Environment, Frankenplankton, Global Warming, Ocean, Phytoplankton, Sea, carbon dioxide, ecosystems, greenhouse gas
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Oceans Losing The Ability to Trap CO2, they may be reaching the saturation point.
