Author Archives: ovehblog

Coral bleaching in Florida & the Caribbean

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Mark Eakin from NOAA posted the following observations on coral list on the 31st July:

Following on to the increased potential for bleaching that we
reported two weeks ago, thermal stress has continued to increase in
the lower Florida Keys. This results from heating of the Florida Bay
waters to an anomaly well over 1 degree C. Another similar region of
anomalous warmth extends along the western coast of the Bahamas from
Andros Island to Grand Bahamas Island. The Florida Bay waters that
bathe the lower Florida Keys and the waters from northwestern Andros
to Bimini have accumulated more than 4 degree weeks of warming,
placing both areas under a Level 1 Bleaching Alert.

Late last week, Billy Causey reported about 10% bleaching of corals
off West Summerland Key around the western side of Bahia Honda
Channel on the ocean side of the bridge. It was especially
disturbing that the bleaching was hitting a diverse group of coral
species, not just the more sensitive ones.

 

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WWF: Reef or Rubble?

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From this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald

(Link to article, Link to WWF) :

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August 10th, 2007

AT LEAST $300 million needs to be spent urgently to clean up millions of tonnes of mud and chemical pollution pouring into the Great Barrier Reef every year, to boost the reef’s immunity to climate change, according to a new report from WWF.

The Federal Government had to act now to give the reef its best chance of avoiding future degradation, the environment group said. Its assessment comes before the release of a federal report widely believed to show a dramatic increase in pollution levels in Queensland rivers and creeks feeding into the reef.

Reefs worldwide are under threat. A University of North Carolina study published on Wednesday said large-scale degradation of the world’s coral reefs was much worse than previously thought. Over the past two decades, coral had disappeared at five times the rate of the planet’s rainforests, it said.

WWF said more than 90 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef’s pollution came from soil, hazardous chemicals and pesticides washing off farms and sugarcane plantations.

“We are creating a milkshake in the reef that is feeding the larvae of crown-of-thorns starfish,” said Nick Heath, of WWF-Australia.

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Little room for doubt: IPCC working group II reports

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unep.jpgThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the most reliable consensus on the science of climate change – has released the full report of Working group II (Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability). The conclusions of this heavily reviewed and objective scientific consensus are that ‘Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.’

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Indo-Pacific Coral Decline

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A new study released today by Bruno & Selig in PLoS Biology shows some very interesting trends in coral decline in the Indo-Pacific. In a nutshell:

  • Average coral cover is lower than expected (22.1%, 2003).
  • Coral cover is surprisingly uniform across regions.
  • Coral cover on the GBR (often considered one of the best managed reefs in the world) is no higher than other regions (e.g. Phillipines).
  • Although there is a lack of historical baselines, regional coral cover is at least 20% below historical records.
  • Indo-pacific coral cover declined from 42.5% in the early 1980’s to 22.1% in 2003.
  • This equates to an average rate of decline of 1% per year (approximately 1500km2 per year).
  • Between 1995 – 2003 coral cover declined by 14% (3168km2 per year).
  • In 2003, only 4% of surveyed reefs had high coral cover (>50%), and only 2% of reefs had very high cover (>60%).
  • Regional scale decline of the Great Barrier Reef occured several decades earlier than often assumed (<1970).
  • Coral decline in some sub-regions of the Indo-Pacific began during the 1960’s – 1970’s.
  • Localised anthropogenic impacts have caused coral losses (e.g. sedimentation, destructive fishing practices).

Based upon 6001 surveys of 2667 reefs in the Indo-Pacific, the report makes for sobering reading. I have decided to add a “sub-section” to Climate Shifts entitled “Science Review” to encourage a weekly debate upon key scientific issues such as this – head over to Science Review to read more about the study and comment / debate the major findings.

The “GBR Swindle” comes round one last time

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Dr Pete Ridd has responded to my latest response to his comments. Given that he raises a few issues of fact, I think it is useful to explore his conjectures point by point in a final post. Some of these conjectures are easily dispelled which I think will be useful to the wider audience. I do think, however, that we will draw the line under the "Swindle" issue after this post. Continue reading →

8 million year old bacteria from glacial ice revived

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An interesting article from the Falkowski lab at Rutgers university has just been released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The authors extracted bacteria and DNA from ice between 3-5 metres beneath the surface of an Antarctic glacier, and ‘resuscitated’ a strain of bacteria 8 million years in age. Previously, the oldest record of DNA extracted from glacial ice was 800,000 years old, from the southern Greenland icesheet.The following comment from Falkoswki in a New Scientist article in particular caught my eye:

 

"Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University, who led the study, describes the ancient bacteria as small round cells that had been in a "suspended state of animation for 8 million years". He says the increasingly rapid flow of glaciers into the ocean as a result of global warming could release new organisms into the sea but he does not believe this is cause for concern because marine bacteria and viruses are typically far less harmful to human health than, for instance, those found on land."

A Bolt out of the blue.

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As I was quoted in The Australian this weekend in a piece entitled “Coral bleaching as record cold snap hits” (and have blogged here earlier on several occasions), cold weather across southern Queensland has resulted in coral bleaching in the exposed reef flats in the Capricorn Bunker group and the Keppell Islands (as confirmed by a CSIRO oceanographer, David Griffin).

No sooner than this was published, Andrew Bolt, an Op-Ed writer for the Herald Sun took dislike to the published comment: “Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said the extreme variation in temperature might be more common as climate change caused hotter summers and colder winters”.

Welcome back from vacation, Andrew. I must say, I have missed you.

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European heatwaves have doubled since 1880

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A new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research has some interesting implications for climate shifts in Europe (link to journal article). The dataset comes from 54 daily maximum temperature series from around Europe (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom). According to the authors, after correcting for bias, between 1880 and 2005, the length of summer heat waves over western Europe has doubled and the frequency of hot days has almost tripled. Continue reading →

Blackle

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The more energy conscious of you might want to take a look at a new google derived search engine, Blackle. As quoted from the website:

“Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. The Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen” Continue reading →

Mass coral bleaching off Okinawa

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Yossie Loya - bleaching It would seem that the beautiful reefs of Okinawa in Japan are experiencing stress again. In 1998, large areas of these unique Japanese reef systems bleached and died. Let us hope that this is not about to happen again. Here is a story that just appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun (August 5) . Picture by Professor Yossi Loya (1998 bleaching event in Okinawa)

Large swaths of coral off islands around Okinawa Prefecture have been turning white due to a phenomenon known as coral bleaching–a sign that the coral is dying. This phenomenon has been sighted for the first time in four years in locations in the prefecture such as the coast around Ishigakijima island, which boasts the country’s largest coral reef, and is thought have been brought on by high water temperatures in July.

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