climate change

The Arctic – Tequila Sunset

9 February, 2013

Source: The Economist

ON SEPTEMBER 16th 2012, at the height of the summer melt, the Arctic Ocean’s ice sheet had shrunk to an area of 3.41m square kilometres (1.32m square miles), half what it was in 1979. And its volume had shrunk faster still, to a quarter of what it was in 1979, for the sheet is getting thinner as well as smaller. One culprit is global warming, which is fiercer at the poles than elsewhere. The world’s average temperature in 2012 was nearly 0.5°C above the average for 1951-80. In the Arctic, it was up almost 2°C.

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Are the oceans on a collision course?

7 June, 2012

Source: Mother Jones

Author: Tim Philpott

Back in 2006, a team of scientists from Canada, the United States, Sweden, and Panama published a landmark reportin the prestigious journal Science on the state of the oceans. The researchers highlighted what they called an “ongoing erosion of diversity” in sea life that, if left unchecked, would lead to the “collapse of all taxa currently being fished by the mid-21st century.”

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World’s oceans in peril

16 November, 2011

Source: Aljazeera

From a climate change/fisheries/pollution/habitat destruction point of view, our nightmare is here, it’s the world we live in.”

This bleak statement about the current status of the world’s oceans comes from Dr Wallace Nichols, a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences. Al Jazeera asked Dr Nichols, along with several other ocean experts, how they see the effects climate change, pollution and seafood harvesting are having on the oceans.

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New study – Man and the Last Great Wilderness: Human Impact on the Deep Sea

1 August, 2011

The deep sea, the largest ecosystem on Earth and one of the least studied, harbours high biodiversity and provides a wealth of resources. Although humans have used the oceans for millennia, technological developments now allow exploitation of fisheries resources, hydrocarbons and minerals below 2000 m depth. The remoteness of the deep seafloor has promoted the disposal of residues and litter. Ocean acidification and climate change now bring a new dimension of global effects.

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