Triple Trouble - Ocean under Stress
28 November 2011
Scientists concerned how three environmental
problems could combine to threaten the ocean, take warnings to the
climate change discussion at the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change Seventeenth session of the Conference
of the Parties (COP17) in Durban, South Africa.
Over the coming decades and centuries, the ocean will become
increasingly stressed by at least three interacting factors. Rising
seawater temperatures, ocean acidification and ocean deoxygenation
will cause substantial changes in marine physics, chemistry and
biology. These changes will affect the ocean in ways that we are
only beginning to understand; these changes are likely to affect
every one of us.
The global ocean covers nearly three quarters
of Earth’s surface, contains 96% of its living space, provides
around half of the oxygen we breathe and is an increasing source of
protein for a rapidly growing world population. However, human
activity over the last 200 years is having an impact on this
precious resource on local, regional and global scales. It is
imperative that international decision-makers understand the
enormous role the ocean plays in sustaining life on Earth and the
consequences of a high CO2 world for the ocean and
society.
An international partnership of Plymouth
Marine Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San
Diego, OCEANA, UKOA, the European Project on Ocean Acidification
(32 partner institutes from 10 countries), and the Mediterranean
Sea Acidification in a Changing Climate programme (16 partner
institutes from 10 countries mainly bordering the Mediterranean
Sea), is now highlighting its concern about the impacts of the
multiple and interacting stressors of warming, acidification
and deoxygenation on ocean systems, which will occur in the coming
decades as the result of a high CO2 world.
Plymouth Marine Laboratory’s Dr Carol Turley
OBE, will be taking these messages to the Conference of the Parties
17 at the UNFCCC meeting in South Africa. “I’m here to take the
message to stakeholders and policymakers from a diverse group of
organisations including, international science partnerships,
oceanographic institutions and an NGO. Often forgotten in such
discussions are the ocean and the enormous and diverse resources it
provides, including food and other resources even half the oxygen
we breathe. The health of the ocean is therefore relevant to
everyone one of us on Planet Earth and we are concerned about how
these three stressors - ocean warming, acidification and
deoxygenation - produce a very worrying combination which threatens
the ocean and everything it provides us. We have produced a short
‘Ocean Stress
Guide’ that sums this up in clear
language; we would urge everyone to read it.”
While ocean acidification has recently been
recognized as a topic of high research priority leading to a growth
of studies, deoxygenation has not reached that level of
recognition. The study of warming is more mature but research at
the level of ocean ecosystems and biogeochemistry requires more
attention.
But what is really missing is the joint
perspective, where the full and combined effect of two or all three
stressors acting at the same time is investigated. Already detailed
laboratory studies and field experiments from regional to global
scale monitoring and modelling are beginning, through
cross-disciplinary and international cooperative partnerships. In
order to better understand the impacts on ecosystems and the
consequences for every one of us, research will increasingly have
to follow a multi-disciplinary approach across the physical,
chemical, life, Earth, social and economic sciences.
These studies need to be policy relevant and
ensure a rapid transfer of knowledge to and from researchers and
decision makers. Importantly, research capacity needs to be grown
globally, particularly in developing countries where their
dependence on the goods and services provided by the ocean makes
them particularly vulnerable and where capacity is notably low. To
achieve all this there would be a need for greater coordination of
monitoring, research and training at the international level.
Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientist for the
UK’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra),
echoed the need for acceptance of these issues and the potential
impacts of them working together: “The ocean is an incredible
source of food and an amazing source of biodiversity. Now we see
these irreplaceable resources facing not one but three stressors
potentially acting together in ways that we are only just beginning
to investigate and understand. Highlighting this unholy alliance is
essential if stakeholders and governments are to make decisions
that will affect everyone on this planet. Carbon dioxide, the
common factor, is related to energy, energy is related to economic
growth and therefore, as we argue that we need to reduce the threat
of climate change, ocean acidification or oxygen depletion, we will
have to change the way we produce and use energy, the way we manage
our land as well.”