Taking the acid test on the Great Barrier Reef

Unlike some sexual processes in the animal world, coral reproduction remains a rather magical and mysterious event. And Dr Selina Ward loves it. The thousands of little red bundles of eggs and sperm are, she says, “beautiful”.

But at Heron Island Research Station, as she waits patiently for her corals to spawn, there’s now something more to Dr Ward’s research than simply untangling the mysteries of how corals release their egg and sperm bundles to the ocean currents.

Dr Ward, from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Marine Studies, is looking at how changes in the ocean’s chemistry – driven by increasing greenhouse gases – will affect the reproduction of corals and their ability to “settle” and build new reefs. And her preliminary results are not looking good.

When coral scientists first looked at the impact of global warming on reefs, they focused on rising sea temperatures and bleaching. This is still a concern and likely to impact large parts of the Great Barrier Reef, but the scientists now believe ocean acidification could be the process that will push the world’s reefs to the edge.

Scripps Honors Prince Albert II of Monaco (video)

Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego honors His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco for his stewardship of the water planet.

The Acid Ocean (video)

Too much CO2 can be threat to ocean life by making the water more acidic, making it more difficult for sealife to make their shells and skeletons. A very acid ocean will even dissolve the skeletons of corals and snails. Stanford University’s Dr. Steve Palumbi discusses the impact of an increasingly acidic ocean.

Carbonated Oceans (video)

Prodcast from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UC San Diego) about ocean acidification.

Coral reef scientist slams Brumby over ‘reckless vandalism’

One of the world’s leading coral reef scientists has slammed the Brumby Government’s proposal to export Victoria’s brown coal to India as “reckless vandalism”.

John “Charlie” Veron, who discovered a quarter of the world’s identified coral species, said any move to export the state’s vast reserves of brown coal would only further endanger the Great Barrier Reef.

“It’s reckless vandalism. Brown coal would have to be the dirtiest, nastiest form of energy there is. It is absolutely essential that it remains in the ground. That is obvious,” he told The Age.

The Sunday Age revealed in September that Energy Minister Peter Batchelor had championed in a Cabinet committee a 40-year proposal to export 12 million tonnes of brown coal to India. Mr Brumby has said that, given environmental approval processes, there is no reason why Victoria should not export its coal. “Australia exports oil, Australia exports gas, Australia exports black coal and Australia exports uranium,” he said. “So why you would single out brown coal and say you can’t export that?”

But Dr Veron, the Townsville-based author of the three-volume Corals of the World, said that avoiding every tonne of carbon dioxide was now crucial to save the world’s reefs. Moreover, he said science had now shown that corals will struggle to survive with the carbon dioxide levels already in the atmosphere.

Geoengineering being discussed in Washington

Dr. Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington provided a balanced look at the potential benefits and also the costs and possible harm that geoengineering techniques could offer in our quest to find a “Magic Bullet” to counter global warming.

Can global warming be mitigated by a technological fix such as injecting light-blocking particles into the atmosphere or chemically “scrubbing” excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere? Department of Global Ecology scientist Ken Caldeira addressed this question in his testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology in a hearing titled “Geoengineering: Assessing the Implications of Large-Scale Climate Intervention” on November 5, 2009.

Caldeira testified that climate change poses a real risk to Americans and that the surest way to reduce this risk is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. But other options, such as geoengineering approaches, may also cost-effectively contribute to risk reduction in certain circumstances.Solar Radiation Management (SRM) approaches seek to reduce the amount of climate change by reflecting some of the sun’s warming rays back to space. Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) approaches seek to reduce the amount of climate change and ocean acidification by removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

EU researchers call for more ambitious CO2 reduction targets for the sake of the world’s oceans

Scientists working on the EU-funded CARBOOCEAN project have reiterated calls for a greater reduction of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Current targets are not strict enough, they argue, as contrary to popular belief, their findings show how the regional carbon sinks in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean that take up more CO2 than they release are not stable and have decreased in nearly a decade.

Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will accelerate ocean acidification and diminish the effectiveness of marine carbon sink areas, new EU-funded research shows. The CARBOOCEAN (‘Marine carbon sources and sinks assessment’) project, supported under the ‘Sustainable development, global change and ecosystems’ Thematic area of the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), reveals that finding and quantifying the CO2 in the oceans, and understanding how it got there is key. Backed by more than EUR 14 million in funding, the CARBOOCEAN project finds that overestimating the ocean’s ability to act as a sink can be vital when policy is under development.

Stop killing the world’s oceans

As a native New Englander, I know full and well how much we depend on the oceans. They have often been a solution for our problems.

They’ve been a highway for goods and people, connecting us to the world, and a barrier against foreign invasion, protecting us from the world; a source of food and wealth, going back to our earliest beginnings, when whale oil lit our houses and when cod were so plentiful that huge specimens were commonly stacked like cordwood on our docks and wharves, and still there were so many that you could almost walk on their backs across some harbors.

Until the recent unrelenting hammering by our technologically impressive, very efficient, very destructive commercial fishing fleets, the seas have seemed an inexhaustible cornucopia of sea life for our sustenance, delight and wonder.

Now, science tells us the global wild fish catch is, for the first time in history, declining. Fortunately, we also know what steps our governments need to take to reverse this trend — steps that can again return our seas to abundance.

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Carbon dioxide combines with seawater to create carbonic acid, raising the acidity of that vast solution and reducing the amount of available carbonate. And that is serious mischief for all kinds of sea life, from corals and pteropods, continuing on through shellfish, clams, oysters, lobsters, mussels and so on, which need carbonate to make the structures that support them.

BIOACID

– Germany launches First National Research Programme on Ocean Acidification –

September 2009 / Kiel. Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are not only affecting our atmosphere, they are also changing our oceans on a global scale. Only a few years ago, marine scientists first registered a shift in the chemistry of seawater that raised their concern. The oceans, habitat of the largest continuous ecosystem on our planet, were becoming more acidic. Ongoing studies are demonstrating alarming consequences for many marine life forms, from tiny plankton, molluscs, fish, coral reefs up to whales. Many species will be challenged in their very survival. Under the umbrella of the new research programme BIOACID, more than 100 scientists and technicians from 14 German research institutes and universities are dedicating fact-finding missions over the next three years towards a better understanding of ocean acidification and its repercussions for life in the sea.

BIOACID – the name of the new research programme stands for Biological Impacts of Ocean ACIDification. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding this high-profile focus in the marine sciences with a sum of 8.5 million Euros. Prof. Ulf Riebesell, marine biologist at IFM-GEOMAR and coordinator of the joint project, is looking forward to the challenge: “The funding of BIOACID demonstrates the emphasis Germany places on understanding the effects of climate change on the oceans. We are in the fortunate position of carrying research in the field of ocean acidification to new dimensions and are very excited about the prospects ahead.”

Ocean acidification position in Scripps Institution of Oceanography

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at the University of California in San Diego (http://scripps.ucsd.edu) invites faculty applications (tenure track to tenured) to fill one or more positions in one or more of the fields listed below. We seek motivated, broad-thinking scientist-educators to establish vigorous research programs and provide intellectual leadership in their fields while complementing existing expertise at Scripps, other UCSD departments, and nearby institutions. SIO is a world renowned center of marine research with approximately 200 principal investigators leading research programs on all aspects of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences.