Oceans are 'soaking up less CO2'
The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, scientists have said.
University of East Anglia researchers gauged CO2 absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments.
Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.
Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.
Researchers said the findings, published in a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research, were surprising and worrying because there were grounds for believing that, in time, the ocean might become saturated with our emissions.
'Saturated' ocean
BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said: "The researchers don't know if the change is due to climate change or to natural variations.
"But they say it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become 'saturated' with our emissions - unable to soak up any more."
He said that would "leave all our emissions to warm the atmosphere".
Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only half of it stays there; the rest goes into carbon sinks.
There are two major carbon sinks in the biological cycle: the oceans and the land "biosphere", which includes plants and the soil.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7053903.stm
Published: 2007/10/20 04:50:45 GMT
© BBC MMVII
November 29, 2007
November 8, 2007
Changing Ocean, Arctic Humpbacks
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/9438455p-9350294c.html
Humpback, fin whales observed in the Arctic Ocean
OUT OF USUAL RANGE: Federal officials say it's too early to determine a cause.
By DAN JOLING
The Associated Press
(Published: November 8, 2007)
Endangered humpback whales swam into the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's northern coast this summer, far beyond their usual range, but federal officials monitoring the waters say it's too soon to determine if it's a trend or an anomaly.
Environmental groups say the presence of humpbacks hundreds of miles north of their usual habitat is probably another sign of the effects of global warming and the shifting Arctic ecosystem. They are calling for more study of the endangered animals' habits before industrial activity is allowed to expand off Alaska's northern shores.
Robin Cacy, a spokeswoman for the federal Minerals Management Service, which oversees lease sales for offshore petroleum drilling in federal waters, confirmed that humpback whales were spotted in the Beaufort Sea east of Barrow, the northernmost community in the United States. Humpback whales were seen in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast last year, she said.
Also, endangered fin whales were detected this summer by acoustic monitoring north of the Bering Strait in the Chukchi Sea, Cacy said. The fin whales were recorded as far north as Point Lay, a coastal Inupiat Eskimo village of 235 about 700 miles northwest of Anchorage.
Some of the whales were spotted by observers involved with the oil industry. Shell Exploration and Production and its contractors performed seismic work this summer in anticipation of bidding on leases. Lease sales are scheduled for 2008 in the Chukchi Sea and 2009 in the Beaufort Sea.
UNEXPECTED SIGHTINGS
No one was expecting humpbacks near the activity connected to Outer Continental Shelf lease sales, said Brad Smith, a protective resources biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"We expected those to be farther south and west of the OCS planning areas," Smith said. "We didn't anticipate that they'd been encountered in any of the OCS exploration activity that we're doing this year."
Brendan Cummings, ocean programs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the sightings may be an indication of a recovering humpback population expanding its range or of desperate animals in search of food.
Other species that use the Chukchi Sea, from walrus congregating on Alaska's northwest shore to gray whales seeking new feeding areas, are behaving differently because of climate change, he said.
"It looks like the populations are suffering from it," he said. "All signs point to global warming. That would be the first suspect of why the whales are there."
Deborah Williams, a former Department of Interior special assistant for Alaska, and now an advocate for finding solutions to climate change, said the presence of humpback and fin whales so far north has significant implications for the animals' management and development.
"We now have even more compelling reasons to protect the Arctic Ocean and the species dramatically affected by climate change," she said.
RECORD LOW PACK ICE
Sheela McLean, spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries service in Juneau, said humpbacks range widely and have been spotted on the Russian part of the Chukchi Sea. However, humpbacks are not usually associated with pack ice, so sightings farther north might be shifts in distribution caused by climate change, she said.
This year was a record low year for pack ice. The National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder in September recorded 1.65 million square miles of sea ice. That's 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.
Gary Strasburg, a spokesman for the Minerals Management Service in Washington, D.C., said a sighting of an endangered species in a new area would not mean an immediate change in how the agency regulates petroleum exploration. The agency would determine whether the presence of humpbacks was a trend, and if so, determine the appropriate response, he said.
Federal laws allow a certain level of "harassment" of marine mammals, Smith said. Permits issued in 2007 for exposure of marine mammals to noise from seismic activities covered neither humpback nor fin whales, he said.
"They do, however, have authorization to harass other whales and marine mammals, which were expected to be encountered during the course of their seismic operations," Smith said, including ringed seals, bearded seals, gray whales and bowhead whales.
Conditions imposed upon exploration for humpbacks may be no different than what's in place now, Smith said. The sensitivity of bowhead whales, which remain close to sea ice and are hunted in limited numbers by Eskimo whalers, is considered equal to or greater than the sensitivity of humpbacks, he said.
Cummings does not agree with that assessment of humpbacks -- or with the government's protective measures in general.
"These are animals that are entirely dependent on sound," he said of humpbacks.
"We don't believe that permits issued to date in the Beaufort Sea comply with the spirit or the letter of the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the Endangered Species Act," he said.
Humpback, fin whales observed in the Arctic Ocean
OUT OF USUAL RANGE: Federal officials say it's too early to determine a cause.
By DAN JOLING
The Associated Press
(Published: November 8, 2007)
Endangered humpback whales swam into the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's northern coast this summer, far beyond their usual range, but federal officials monitoring the waters say it's too soon to determine if it's a trend or an anomaly.
Environmental groups say the presence of humpbacks hundreds of miles north of their usual habitat is probably another sign of the effects of global warming and the shifting Arctic ecosystem. They are calling for more study of the endangered animals' habits before industrial activity is allowed to expand off Alaska's northern shores.
Robin Cacy, a spokeswoman for the federal Minerals Management Service, which oversees lease sales for offshore petroleum drilling in federal waters, confirmed that humpback whales were spotted in the Beaufort Sea east of Barrow, the northernmost community in the United States. Humpback whales were seen in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast last year, she said.
Also, endangered fin whales were detected this summer by acoustic monitoring north of the Bering Strait in the Chukchi Sea, Cacy said. The fin whales were recorded as far north as Point Lay, a coastal Inupiat Eskimo village of 235 about 700 miles northwest of Anchorage.
Some of the whales were spotted by observers involved with the oil industry. Shell Exploration and Production and its contractors performed seismic work this summer in anticipation of bidding on leases. Lease sales are scheduled for 2008 in the Chukchi Sea and 2009 in the Beaufort Sea.
UNEXPECTED SIGHTINGS
No one was expecting humpbacks near the activity connected to Outer Continental Shelf lease sales, said Brad Smith, a protective resources biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"We expected those to be farther south and west of the OCS planning areas," Smith said. "We didn't anticipate that they'd been encountered in any of the OCS exploration activity that we're doing this year."
Brendan Cummings, ocean programs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the sightings may be an indication of a recovering humpback population expanding its range or of desperate animals in search of food.
Other species that use the Chukchi Sea, from walrus congregating on Alaska's northwest shore to gray whales seeking new feeding areas, are behaving differently because of climate change, he said.
"It looks like the populations are suffering from it," he said. "All signs point to global warming. That would be the first suspect of why the whales are there."
Deborah Williams, a former Department of Interior special assistant for Alaska, and now an advocate for finding solutions to climate change, said the presence of humpback and fin whales so far north has significant implications for the animals' management and development.
"We now have even more compelling reasons to protect the Arctic Ocean and the species dramatically affected by climate change," she said.
RECORD LOW PACK ICE
Sheela McLean, spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries service in Juneau, said humpbacks range widely and have been spotted on the Russian part of the Chukchi Sea. However, humpbacks are not usually associated with pack ice, so sightings farther north might be shifts in distribution caused by climate change, she said.
This year was a record low year for pack ice. The National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder in September recorded 1.65 million square miles of sea ice. That's 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.
Gary Strasburg, a spokesman for the Minerals Management Service in Washington, D.C., said a sighting of an endangered species in a new area would not mean an immediate change in how the agency regulates petroleum exploration. The agency would determine whether the presence of humpbacks was a trend, and if so, determine the appropriate response, he said.
Federal laws allow a certain level of "harassment" of marine mammals, Smith said. Permits issued in 2007 for exposure of marine mammals to noise from seismic activities covered neither humpback nor fin whales, he said.
"They do, however, have authorization to harass other whales and marine mammals, which were expected to be encountered during the course of their seismic operations," Smith said, including ringed seals, bearded seals, gray whales and bowhead whales.
Conditions imposed upon exploration for humpbacks may be no different than what's in place now, Smith said. The sensitivity of bowhead whales, which remain close to sea ice and are hunted in limited numbers by Eskimo whalers, is considered equal to or greater than the sensitivity of humpbacks, he said.
Cummings does not agree with that assessment of humpbacks -- or with the government's protective measures in general.
"These are animals that are entirely dependent on sound," he said of humpbacks.
"We don't believe that permits issued to date in the Beaufort Sea comply with the spirit or the letter of the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the Endangered Species Act," he said.
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