Ocean Acidification

NANAIMO – New Democrat MLA for Nanaimo-North Cowichan Doug Routley says aquaculture operations will be made more sustainable and environmentally-friendly thanks to a joint grant from the provincial and federal governments.

“Shellfish farms create good jobs for people in our communities and help feed B.C. and the world,” said MLA Routley. “Ocean acidification is creating challenges for shellfish, and we’re proud to be partnering with Seed Science to address this and help ensure food security into the future.”

Seed Science Ltd., based in Nanaimo, will receive $475,493 to investigate a more energy-efficient method to produce higher quality algae as food for cultured bivalves. This project will result in the production of cheaper, higher-quality food for bivalves, and enable juvenile bivalve to be kept on land longer, until they are big and healthy enough to better cope with the effects of ocean acidification when being introduced into the sea.

This funding is part of $7.9 million being announced today to support research and restoration efforts that track and improve salmon returns and invest in alternative aquaculture operations, making them more efficient and reducing their impact on the ocean environment.

As a cost-shared program between the federal and BC governments, applications are assessed jointly by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Province of British Columbia against a variety of criteria and must receive joint approval to proceed. These latest investments will benefit BC’s fish and seafood sector by ensuring it can continue to offer stable employment to thousands of Canadians.

Funding is open to Indigenous communities, industry associations, environmental non-governmental organizations, commercial enterprises, and academic institutions.

Hawaiʻi Pacific University is using laser technology to analyze coral reefs and marine debris found in Hawaiʻi’s ocean water.

The Raman spectrometer was acquired through a three hundred and $320,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

The device will shine high intensity light on coral and study the way the light scatters. The pattern of the light beam’s scatter reveals the chemistry of coral growth.

The laser can also detect different types of microplastics in the water. Plastic pollution increases ocean acidification by attracting harmful bacteria — creating a condition that increases the water’s pH level. Ocean acidification causes coral to bleach, and stunt their growth.

Thomas DeCarlo is an assistant professor of oceanography at HPU, and the principal investigator for the Raman spectrometer.

“You might have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is located a little north of Hawaiʻi. That’s in that location because the way the winds blow and the way currents circulate in the surface ocean. It forces plastic to accumulate in the middle of what’s called a gyres, which is water going in a circular motion,” DeCarlo tells HPR.

DeCarlo hopes to use the Raman spectrometer to gather data that helps improve coral growth.

(Image: A. Vargas/IAEA)

Nuclear and isotopic techniques can help us to better understand the world we live in. The data we gather with these techniques can lead to improved, science-based policy making, including in relation to climate change. We can study both land and water systems using various nuclear techniques to evaluate the effects of climate change on the environment.

These techniques and tools are effective in monitoring greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄), understanding environmental changes to oceans, mountains and their ecosystems, and developing ways to adapt to food and water shortages exacerbated by changing weather patterns.

“Countries all over the world are increasingly recognising the value of using nuclear techniques to combat various challenges faced by climate change. They are discovering first-hand how beneficial the technologies promoted by the IAEA are,” said Najat Mokhtar, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications.

Data for identifying, monitoring and managing sources of greenhouse gas emissions are collected using isotopic techniques to understand how they are connected to changes occurring on land, in oceans and throughout the atmosphere. We explain how.

Dr Carol Turley, Dr Phil Williamson and Professor Ric Williams explain why we must pay attention to the climate extremes in the ocean. 

The damage to society is clearly greatest when weather extremes occur on land, such as the ferocious heat and deadly floods that recently shattered records across the northern hemisphere.

The evidence linking these extremes to changes in the atmosphere, primarily due to burning fossil fuels, is now overwhelming.

Yet the ocean is also undergoing profound change, with equally crucial consequences for the planet. Both long-term warming and local heatwaves disrupt marine systems, with many impacts that make matters worse for marine life. And for us.

The ocean is both Earth’s central heating system and air conditioner, with its large-scale circulation patterns determining future climate on both regional and global scales.

The ocean is also where more than 90% of recent global warming has occurred, increasing its heat content as thermal energy. Whilst ocean warming – and its rate of increase – is greatest in near-surface waters, where marine life is most abundant, all water depths are affected.

Attribution science, which quantifies the influence of human activity on specific heatwaves, droughts and floods, has developed rapidly in the past decade

The UN’s climate science panel is set to publish a major report in August on the physical changes to our world occurring and projected to happen as a result of human activity, from extreme weather to ocean acidification.

It will be the first comprehensive review of the scientific literature since 2013, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) started its last round of assessment reports, AR5.

Attribution science, which looks at how much human activities lead to climate change, is likely to feature heavily in the report. Here we give an overview of the scientific developments of the past eight years.

AR5 concluded that human influence on the climate system is “clear.” Today scientists say climate change is, without doubt, caused by us. A 2021 study concluded that humans have caused all of the warming observed since the preindustrial period.

Since the last IPCC report, there has been an explosion of attribution studies finding that specific heatwaves, droughts, tropical cyclones and other extreme events were more likely or intense because of climate change. Recent studies have shown that extreme events such as the Siberian heat wave in 2020 would never have happened without humans pumping greenhouse gases into the air.

At The Ocean Foundation (TOF), we approach the global issue of climate change from an international perspective, while focusing on local and regional efforts to monitor changing ocean chemistry and restore the blue carbon-based coastal ecosystems that are key to climate resilience. Around the world, we’ve learned the importance of engaging with governments to address these issues, and that is just as true in the United States. That’s why we’re thrilled to congratulate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the formation of a new Climate Council to bring a holistic government approach in response to our changing climate, a move that will not only be felt in the U.S. but across our planet by everyone who relies on ocean data for climate readiness.

NOAA’s climate models, atmospheric monitoring, environmental databases, satellite imagery, and oceanographic research are used all over the globe, benefiting farmers trying to time harvests with monsoons influenced by conditions in the Indian Ocean and leading international climate science bodies alike. We are glad to see NOAA coalesce these products and their wealth of expertise into addressing one of the greatest challenges we face, climate change. The formation of the NOAA Climate Council is a tangible step towards rapidly bringing together science and governmental action in addressing the root of rising emissions while helping vulnerable communities adapt to the inevitable impacts.

From tackling marine debris and supporting the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, to building capacity for ocean acidification monitoring in multiple regions, TOF and NOAA have strong alignment on priorities that will help reverse the trend of destruction of our ocean. That’s why we were so excited to announce our partnership with the agency earlier this year, which focuses on helping NOAA accelerate their mission to predict changes in climate, weather, the ocean and coasts, and share that knowledge with local communities that depend on it.

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Monitoring Our Ocean’s Changing Chemistry

Given that we have one interconnected ocean, scientific monitoring and research needs to happen in all coastal communities — not just in the places that can afford it. Ocean acidification is expected to cost the global economy more than USD$1 trillion per year by 2100, yet small islands or low income coastal areas often have no infrastructure in place to monitor and respond to the issue. TOF’s International Ocean Acidification Initiative has trained more than 250 scientists from more than 25 countries to monitor, understand, and respond to these changes in ocean chemistry — a result of the ocean taking up almost 30% of the increased carbon emissions in our atmosphere — both locally and collaboratively on a global scale. Along the way, NOAA has lent the expertise of their scientists and supported work to broaden capacity in vulnerable regions, all while making available publicly-accessible data that forms a baseline for understanding.

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