Oceans under serious threat from climate change
Global warming poses an immense threat to the world’s oceans, but leading scientific bodies are severely overlooking the problem, declares a recent report from Science magazine. In fact, our knowledge of climate change’s impacts on marine life is “a mere drop in the ocean,” according to report author Anthony Richardson.
“Climate change is affecting ocean temperatures, the supply of nutrients from the land, ocean chemistry, food chains, shifts in wind systems, ocean currents and extreme events such as cyclones,” states co-author Elvira Poloczanska. And yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Assessment Report focused on only 85 biological changes in marine systems – compared to 28,500 in land systems.
The report authors are calling for major changes to the IPCC’s assessment process, noting that certain climate change effects, such as ocean acidification, “will be irreversible this century.”
A summary of the report (subscription required for full text)
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