Climate change has major impact...(n the Caribbean over the last three deca...)

Date:2/17/2008

n the Caribbean over the last three decades, and losses in the Pacific Ocean also are widespread and severe, Knowlton said. Reefs are like cities, with some parts growing and some parts being destroyed, and only when net growth is positive can reefs persist. These reefs already are under threat to overfishing and local pollution and unless drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is taken soon, these reefs will cease to exist as we know them.

These same greenhouse gas emissions also are creating dramatic buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is rapidly making the worlds oceans more acidic, said panelist Scott Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Current CO2 levels of 380 parts per million already are 30 percent higher than pre-industrial values and many scientific models predict that those rates will triple by the end of the century under business as usual scenarios.

While much of the scientific attention on ocean acidification has looked at the impact of coral reefs, the potential danger to other marine ecosystems is equally severe, Doney said.

Ocean acidification harms plants and animals that form shells from calcium carbonate, he said. Calcifying organisms include not just corals, but many plankton, pteropods (marine snails), clams and oysters, and lobsters. Many of these organisms provide critical food sources or habitats for other organisms and the impact of acidification on food webs and higher trophic levels is not well understood.

Newly emerging evidence suggests that larval and juvenile fish may also be susceptible to changes in ocean pH levels, Doney added. Ocean acidification is rapidly becoming a real problem.

Michael Behrenfeld, an oceanographer from Oregon State University, is studying relationships between climate and the global activity of ocean plants called phytoplankton.

Phytoplankton are of tremendous human importance because their photosynthesis yields oxygen for
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Contact: Jane Lubchenco lubchenco@oregonstate.edu 541-740-1247 Oregon State University Source:Eurekalert

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