Tag: climate change
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A coral reef time machine
Great video about work by Dr. Karl Castillo (a post doc in my lab) and my UNC colleague Dr. Justin Ries on the effects of ocean temperature and acidification on coral growth and survival. You can read more about their research here and here. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvy7hFhiMZU[/youtube]
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Competition for krill links a rebounding ecosystem to penguin declines
At the far bottom of the earth, at the bitter end of the Pacific Ocean, lies the Ross Sea, home to a large proportion of the world’s penguins. Although it’s often considered the last intact marine ecosystem on earth, it appears there is no escape here, nor anywhere else, from the invisible miasma of CO2…
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Coral bleaching on Ningaloo reef, Western Australia
When I was on stabbatical at UQ last year, I had the opportunity to work with a team of scientists from CSIRO and UWA on Ningaloo Reef in northwestern Australia. (read a blog post I wrote about the adventure here) Sadly, reports of very high water temperatures and immenent mass bleaching on this extremely remote…
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NOAA global ocean temperature animation
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTig9gKegQk&NR=1[/youtube] The NOAA polar-orbiting satellites (POES) have been collecting sea surface temperature (SST) data since 1985. This animation shows seasonal, annual and decadal SSTs. Notice the growing and shrinking ice sheets in the arctic and antarctic.
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Smile! It’s a beautiful day on the reef.
No it’s not the Joker, nor one of the Insane Clown Posse. This is the actual face of a real live parrotfish, up close and personal. These abundant herbivores use their toothy beak to munch algae from the reef, thus keeping the substrate clean for baby corals to get a foothold, but also eroding the…
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Everything you ever wanted to know about climate change denial
John Cook, creator of the wildly popular web site Skeptical Science, published a new book today with Haydn Washington. The book is titled Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand and is available here and here at Amazon for less than $25. In John’s words: “In late 2009, I was approached by environmental scientist Haydn…
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Fluffy Penguins
Penguins are atop most folks’ AWW (Adorable Waterfowl of the World) lists. Well listen, y’all, I’m here to set the record straight. I’ve come nose-to-beak with more than a few penguins during my time in the Antarctic, and I want the northern hemisphere to know that these waterbirds are a force to be reckoned with.…
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Where is all of that extra energy going?
The greenhouse gases we are emitting into the atmosphere trap heat from the sun that would otherwise be reflected off the surface of the earth. This is the greenhouse effect that is causing global warming / Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC). Most people, including many scientists, think of the warming of the land and lower atmosphere when they…
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Global change, big animals, and how marine ecosystems work
[Here’s my review, recently published in the Quarterly Review of Biology, of an excellent new book on the complex structure and dynamics of marine ecosystems and their responses to ongoing climate change. ] The scarcity of large vertebrates in graduate oceanography curricula has long perplexed new students and other naifs, given the centrality of fishing…
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The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
Scientific skepticism is healthy. In fact, science by its very nature is skeptical. Genuine skepticism means considering the full body of evidence before coming to a conclusion. However, when you take a close look at arguments expressing climate ‘skepticism’, what you often observe is cherry picking of pieces of evidence while rejecting any data that…