Articles include: Marine photographer captures haunting images of California’s beautiful, but vanishing, kelp forests; Ambitious action on climate change could be Biden’s ‘moon shot’; It’s been a record-long time since the last EF5 tornado. What does that mean?; 12 reports on what the U.S. may make possible on climate; To help address the climate problem, universities must rethink the tenure and promotion system; Dominican Catholic sisters help create climate-friendly investment funds; Ninety-five percent of bull kelp forests have vanished from 200-mile stretch of California coast; Denmark plans to build a massive wind-energy hub on artificial island in the North Sea; Installing solar panels over California’s canals could save 65 billion gallons of water a year; Outer Banks communities see beach renourishment projects as a lifeline.
Tag: marine life
Yale Climate Connection, May 14, 2021
Articles include: Silent calamity: The health impacts of wildfire smoke; White House adviser and environmental justice advocate Catherine Coleman Flowers; Climate change increases renters’ risks; Why are there so many Atlantic named storms? Five possible explanations; Heavier downpours strain septic systems in some rural areas; Devastating disease in dolphins linked to extreme downpours, researcher says; Santa Fe women built homemade air purifiers to help protect people from wildfire smoke; Hundreds of coastal airports at risk from flooding, sea-level rise, study finds; Historic Portsmouth Village under threat from hurricanes and rising seas.
The Daily Climate, April 21, 2021
Articles include: cannabis; melting ice and bowhead whales; emissions increasing as pandemic wanes; economic effects of climate change; scripture to mobilize faithful; cities moving from gas to electricity; more renewable energy; investment firms and climate change; demand for coal rising; microbes that eat methane; food systems produce 1/3rd of GHGs; flood protection policy.
Study: This Commercial Fishing Technique Is a Climate Catastrophe
Mother Jones: This Commercial Fishing Technique Is a Climate Catastrophe. Globally, it releases as much CO2 as 320 million cars, a new study estimates.
Bottom trawling, a common fishing practice where large nets are dragged along the sea floor, is exacerbating the climate crisis, a new study has found.
Centuries of dead plankton, fish and marine mammals lie on the sea floor, their decomposed bodies locking vast amounts of carbon in the sediments beneath the waves. When those sediments are moved by giant trawl nets, the carbon they contain is released back into the ocean and atmosphere, say the team behind the research.
There’s quite a bit more carbon in the sediments than we (first) thought, said Boris Worm, professor of marine conservation biology at Dalhousie University and co-author on the study. “It’s, in fact, more than (is stored) on land—we did not know that.”
“We want to move away from protected areas as a feel-good measure to protect areas that actually do something for people and for nature, and, yeah, the west coast of Vancouver Island would be the region,” he said. The study also looked at how marine protected areas (MPAs) could bolster biodiversity and food production.
The Daily Climate, April 15, 2021
Articles include: 2050 Goals are inadequate; champagne & climate change; 100% clean power; renewable energy powers decarbonization; electric vehicles by 2035; Interior Department and Manchin; Epic Drought; Indian monsoon season; ticks moving into the Arctic; East African oil pipeline; American research station abandoned; food web in the Great Lakes.
The Daily Climate, April 13, 2021
Articles include: Reactions to ‘Fracktured’ investigation; Native communities and rising waters; Losing ‘gods’ to climate change; American Jobs Plan; climate change, wildfires, and Elk; California, oil wells, and groundwater pollution; NFTs fueling climate change; Pacific heat wave & the Gulf of Mexico; burning pig poop; polluting SUVs; laws aimed at pipeline protestors; moms battling climate change.
The Daily Climate, April 8, 2021
Articles include: Marine life can’t survive at the equator; Black climate agenda; Biden to court – dismiss children’s lawsuit; ghost forests and sea level rise; Enbridge pipeline & Michigan; handling the climate crisis; nuclear heating plant; lightning & the Arctic; Report: Canadian wood pellet industry; EPA reverses trump; polar bears’ food plight; PayPal net-zero pledge.
Global warming’s extreme rains threaten Hawaii’s coral reefs
ABC News: Global warming’s extreme rains threaten Hawaii’s coral reefs. Recent flooding in Hawaii caused widespread and obvious damage.
As muddy rainwater surged from Hawaii’s steep seaside mountains and inundated residential communities last month, the damage caused by flooding was obvious — houses were destroyed and businesses swamped, landslides covered highways and raging rivers and streams were clogged with debris.
But extreme rain events predicted to become more common with human-caused global warming not only wreak havoc on land — the runoff from these increasingly severe storms also threatens Hawaii’s coral reefs.
“These big events are the ones that have the greatest damage because they are the ones that put the most sediment and nutrients out onto the reef,” said C. Mark Eakin, senior coral advisor to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the former director of the agency’s Coral Reef Watch program.
Study: Marine life is migrating from the equator to the tropics
InHabitat: Marine life is migrating from the equator to the tropics, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study shows that many species known to reside in the equator’s warm waters are migrating to cooler waters. Scientists behind the study have linked this situation to global warming, saying that water at the equator has become too warm for some species.
Traditionally, the equatorial regions are known to have more species diversity than the poles due to abundant food sources and warm waters. However, with the changing climate, environments for marine life are changing, too. As equatorial waters become less hospitable, many species are migrating for better conditions.
Underwater forests: Why it’s vital we protect our sea meadows
World Economic Forum: Underwater forests: Why it’s vital we protect our sea meadows.
- Human activity contributes to the equivalent of a soccer field of seagrasses being destroyed every 30 minutes around the world, according to the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
- Seagrasses are a vital part of ocean ecosystems and can store twice as much C02 as forests.
- Research has been carried out on these plants to further understand the problem and their potential.
Hundreds of miles from the nearest shore, ribbon-like fronds flutter in the ocean currents sweeping across an underwater mountain plateau the size of Switzerland.