Warmer seas, over-fishing spell disaster for oceans: scientists

Terra Daily ^ | 04/11/2008 | Staff Writers

[cogitator]

The future food security of millions of people is at risk because over-fishing, climate change and pollution are inflicting massive damage on the world's oceans, marine scientists warned this week.

The two-thirds of the planet covered by seas provide one fifth of the world's protein -- but 75 percent of fish stocks are now fully exploited or depleted, a Hanoi conference that ended Friday was told.

Warming seas are bleaching corals, feeding algal blooms and changing ocean currents that impact the weather, and rising sea levels could in future threaten coastal areas from Bangladesh to New York, experts said.

"People think the ocean is a place apart," said Peter Neill, head of the World Ocean Observatory. "In fact it's the thing that connects us -- through trade, transportation, natural systems, weather patterns and everything we depend on for survival."

Marine ecosystems and food security were key concerns at the Global Conference on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands, an international meeting of hundreds of experts from governments, environmental groups and universities.

"There is a race to fish, but in wild capture fisheries right now we can catch no more," said Steven Murawski, fisheries chief science advisor at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"We catch 100 million metric tonnes per year, and that's been very flat globally. Our only hope is if we conserve and rebuild stocks," he said, adding that sustainable aquaculture could help make up the shortfall.

The current plunder is risking long-term sustainability with "too many fishing boats taking too many fish and not allowing the stocks to regenerate," said Frazer McGilvray of Conservation International.

"Once the oceans are gone, we're gone. The oceans sustain the planet."

The world has already seen the effects of over-fishing, experts said.

North Atlantic cod fisheries collapsed in the 1990s, anchovies previously disappeared off Chile, herring off Iceland and sardine off California.

Sixty-four percent of ocean areas fall outside national jurisdictions, making it difficult to reach international consensus or to stop illegal fishing -- a growing concern as high-tech ships scour the high seas.

"It's the Wild West. It's a very small number of boats but the technology allows them to take enormous amounts of fish," said Neill.

"They take only the high commercial product and they throw the bycatch overboard. The waste is extraordinary."

Marine life is also being harmed by climate change, said Murawski.

"We've seen that fish populations go up and down with variations in the climate," he said. "Increasingly we are starting to see long term change affect the productivity, the distributions, the migrations."

The trend is speeding up, Murawski said.

"Our forecasts are wrong," he said. "The melt-off is much faster than has been forecast in the models."

Meanwhile land-based pollution puts heavy strain on oceans, said Ellik Adler of the UN Environment Programme.

"Rivers of untreated sewage, factories, refineries, oil industry discharge their effluent into the marine environment, and this causes huge damage," he said. "Marine pollution has no political borders."

There are few easy fixes, experts said, but one initiative now being considered is setting up a global network of marine protected areas.

"You've got to get agreements between countries," said consultant Sue Wells, whose has worked in coastal East Africa. "Some developed countries have already closed some areas, and most coastal countries are now considering it."

Satellites could monitor no-catch areas, she said, while inspiration could come from South Pacific fishing communities.

"They have taboo areas, coral reef sanctuaries, where fish would be saved for bad weather periods or major festivals and feast," she said. "They know if they leave an area and don't fish there, they'll have much better stocks."

It is a view that has been lost in modern times, she said, where the common view now was "if I don't go and fish it, someone else will."

[cogitator]

Perhaps you could pass that comment on to Doc Hansen and his media hit men as well.

Passions are certainly high on this issue. That's why I'd prefer people to try and stick to the science. A media report is a very poor place to evaluate the scientific merit of anyone's scientific contributions. Dr. Singer doesn't exactly take the high road with regard to Hansen and Oppenheimer. All of this detracts from reasoned and non-emotional evaluations.

[cogitator]

The atmosphere and the oceans have been in a decade long cooling trend.

That's what the skeptics want you to think. If we're in a cooling trend, why are the average temperatures of the period 2000-2008 higher than those from 1990-2000?

Read my profile, point #4, paragraph beginning "Quote from the above". If you wish to defer telling me that I'm wrong until 2013, that's fine with me. As it stands, I am confident that the average global temperature of the years 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 -- when calculated -- will be higher than the average global temperature of 1998. The only things that I think would render this prediction inaccurate are: a) a major Pinatubo-class or bigger volcanic eruption; b) another La Nina similar to the one this year or bigger; c) a major asteroid strike, or d) significant nuclear war. If (c) or (d) happen, we won't be worrying about climate change for a few years. Please note that I am unworried by anything the Sun does.

In February 2014, feel free to evaluate my statement. Evaluating climate trends requires patience. That's just the way it is.

[cogitator]

See post 17. Explain the observed sea level rise without referring to the effects of thermal expansion and increased melting of continental ice masses.

Good luck (insert Spockian eyebrow raise here).

[cogitator]

Apologies, I miswrote. I should have written:

The current anomaly maps show large cool areas attributable to La Nina.

[avacado]

"That's what the skeptics want you to think. If we're in a cooling trend, why are the average temperatures of the period 2000-2008 higher than those from 1990-2000?"

A cooling trend simply means that the temperatures are trending downwards. They have been for the last 10 years. If you plot the temperatures from 1998 to 2007 and do a linear fit you'll have a straight line that is trending downward. We certainly are not trending upward and that is their entire hypothesis of global warming as CO2 increases is for a CONSTANT upward trend. The empirical data does not support the global warming hypothesis.

[tongass kid]

I think you should not post on this topic until 2014.

[avacado]

"The current anomaly maps show large cool areas attributable to La Nina."

Just as the 1998 anomaly maps show large warm areas attributable to one of the biggest and most extreme El Ninos ever.

[Gulf War One]

http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/letters/IPCC_letter_14April08.pdf

[cogitator]

I think you should not post on this topic until 2014.

I wasn't the person that brought up global warming. This thread was about an article describing the current imperiled state of the oceans. While I've posted about global warming topics in the past numerous times, I've decided not to post on global warming topics anymore myself. However, on occasion I will respond when the subject is brought up, and if someone posts something inviting a substantive response, I will attempt to provide that.

Speaking of which:

You will find all of the years in the 1990s, except for 1998, ranked below the years 2001-2007. I misstated the period earlier because 2000 was still influenced by the big 1999 La Nina. Because of the La Nina this year, the global average temperature anomaly for 2008 might drop into the 1990s range.

We'll just have to see what happens in 2009, won't we? (However, when La Nina fades to normal, average monthly temperatures will return to the basic decadal average characteristic of this decade. Just watch.)

[cogitator]

Just as the 1998 anomaly maps show large warm areas attributable to one of the biggest and most extreme El Ninos ever.

And you're stating the obvious why?

[avacado]

"And you're stating the obvious why? "

Because I think we can both agree that both Ninos effect global temperature.

[cogitator]

D'Aleo is invited to check out the data on the water vapor content of the atmosphere over the last 20 years, and also to explain it.

Water Vapor, Precipitation, and Evaporation: The View from Satellites

Since apparently you like D'Aleo's work (it's in the letter), send him this link. Ask for his response. Post it here, if he gives you permission.

I'd be considerably more impressed if any of the signatories was in a field even close to climate science. Everybody's entitled to their opinion, of course.

[cogitator]

Because I think we can both agree that both Ninos effect global temperature.

Yes, we certainly agree on that. That's why, when this La Nina is over, global temperatures will return to the average values characteristic of this decade.

[Vob]

Well you better go now. The NMFS will not open recreational red snapper this until June and it will close August 5. Next year we will be lucky to get a twenty day season in the Gulf. With almost thirty years experience behind me I have never seen more red snapper than there are now.

The Pew Charitable Trust and the U.N. are pushing hard to stop recreational fishing and commercial fishing. The U.N. is also heavily involved in promoting “sustainable” fish farming in S.E. Asia. China, North Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia are involved with funding.

We have to import oil and soon we will be importing fish.

vob

[4woodenboats]

I don't know if anyone's told you this yet, but there has been observations of continental ice masses melting since the last Ice Age.

The sea level changes all every day, and at different rates. You could come up with 1000 BS reasons why, such as the one Big Al The Gorebull Warmers Pal tried to lay on the Philipene people a couple years ago.

The Philipene geologists had been studying the receding shoreline in one area for very many years, and had discovered that the land was simply sinking due to a groundwater problem.

All of a sudden, the Gorebull Express flew into town, called a town meeting, and scared the crap out of the locals, who'd never seen anyone so fat or loud. He gave his bull in heat impression, told 'em there's icebergs on the way, they're gonna sink anytime now, and when they see the icebergs in the harbor, RUN!

Naturaly, the geologists who'd been studying and dealing with this natural phenomema for decades weren't amused, but I sure was!

[qam1]

The La Nina is only part of the story. The La Nina is the mid Pacific, but look at the Indian Ocean and to a lesser extent the southern Atlantic and southern Pacific. (Full animation here)

But despite the NOAA's daily graphics showing ALL the oceans cooling, at the end of the February the NOAA claimed the temperature anomaly increased

2008 1 0.2480
2008 2 0.2926

Can you explain to me how the temperature anomaly went down every day and never went up during February, yet at their report at the end of the month they are saying the temp anomaly is higher?

Looks like the data has been "Hansenized"

[cogitator]

Nice answer. Thanks for the effort.

[4woodenboats]

Ooh how witty. You think that up all by yourself?

[cogitator]

This is a nice site about La Nina:

Review the Causes and Consequences of Cold Events: A La Nina Summit

Here's the teleconnections section. Note my emphases.

"George Kiladis (NOAA) opened the session on La Niña teleconnections by first loosely defining the term "teleconnections" as referring to "remote influences". More specifically, in the context of La Niña, it is the influence of SST variations in the tropical Pacific on regional and local climate regimes. He then provided a brief overview of the probable physical causes and effects of teleconnections during El Niño and La Niña (Figures 5, 6).

Physical scientists are researching how events in the tropical Pacific transmit a signal through the atmosphere and ocean to distant places on the globe. Since tropical convection represents the primary "heat engine" for the global circulation, changes in the location of this convection alters the global circulation, which in turn is manifested as climate anomalies. For example, as convection shifts westward from the tropical Pacific into the Indian Ocean during La Niña, the jet stream over the Pacific is weakened, thereby affecting the downstream wave activity (high and low pressure weather systems) moving into North America.

Kiladis provided a list of La Niña and El Niño years in order to identify statistically likely impacts of La Niña around the globe. This was done by the method of "compositing", or averaging the anomalous temperature and precipitation over all La Niña (or El Niño) events, regardless of their magnitude. In this way, the statistical likelihood of a particular teleconnection can be calculated, thereby giving a measure of the probable impact of a La Niña event where the signals are strongest.

Kiladis first showed how islands in the equatorial Pacific Ocean are affected by changes in SSTs. During La Niña, these islands experience drier than normal conditions due to the stabilizing effect of cold SSTs. It was pointed out that these signals might not really be considered teleconnections in sensu strictu, since they are directly influenced by the local SST, rather than remote forcing. He then introduced one measure of the robustness of the observed signals, which is based only on the percentage of time a meteorological station had above or below normal temperature or precipitation, compared to the "expected" sign of the teleconnection signal according to the composites. It was demonstrated that the equatorial Pacific islands had very robust signals, with nearly all La Niña events drier and all El Niño events wetter than normal at these locations.

Several maps were then presented depicting the global temperature and precipitation composites for both La Niña and El Niño events. It was suggested that there was some degree of linearity between El Niño and La Niña impacts over many regions, meaning that cold events in several locations produced the opposite climate anomalies to those occurring during warm events. However, the reliability of the teleconnection signals becomes less as one moves farther away from the tropical Pacific, the "center of action" of ENSO. Thus, even though a given teleconnection might still be defined as "statistically significant", and almost certainly related to the entire population of warm and cold events, the probability of that signal occurring during any one event may not necessarily be very high due to the large amount of climate "noise", or random fluctuations in the atmosphere. This is especially true in the extratropics, where large "internal climate variability" is dominant, as opposed to the tropics, which is to a much larger degree determined by SST. In addition, weak and moderate La Niña events might not be strong enough to generate climate anomalies in distant locations.

Kiladis then discussed what he considered to be among the more robust La Niña teleconnections. These included a tendency for wetter than normal conditions, with a risk for flooding, in southern Africa and the monsoon regions of India, Indonesia, and northern Australia, and drier than normal conditions, sometimes leading to drought, over eastern Africa, the western equatorial Indian Ocean, southern South America, and the southern Plains and southeastern portions of the U.S.. In general, tropical surface temperatures tend to be below normal, with robust signals even as far away from the tropical Pacific as Africa. The most pronounced extratropical temperature signals during La Niña are seen over North America, where there is a pronounced tendency for colder than normal conditions over Alaska, western Canada, and the central Plains of midwestern Canada and the northern United States, and warmer than normal tendencies over the southeastern United States.

Discussion was initiated concerning the tropical temperature signal. Kiladis showed that far-field tropical SST anomalies of the same sign as those in the Pacific developed in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans three to six months following the onset of both warm and cold event conditions. These remote SST anomalies were in phase with the observed tropical surface temperature anomalies, even over the tropical continents, which also lagged the equatorial Pacific SST by the same amount of time. Kiladis pointed out that, if one could explain the far-field SST signal, one could then also account for the tropical temperature signal, since over the ocean surface air temperature follows the SST very closely. He suggested that anomalous surface solar heating because of changes in cloudiness during warm and cold events was a probable factor. Peter Webster (University of Colorado, PAOS) then commented that the monsoon circulation was also a likely player, through observed changes in the intensity of its circulation during warm and cold events and the impact of these changes on the heat budget of the ocean, at least in the Indian sector. It was agreed that this was an important area for future research.

As a cautionary note, Kiladis cited a nearly 20-year-old article by Colin Ramage entitled "Teleconnections and the Siege of Time". Ramage referred to the fact that many of the time series used in teleconnection analyses are of relatively short duration, and that teleconnections identified as being robust during one epoch may fail completely during a later epoch. While some of this might be attributed to the statistical fragility of using short samples, there could also be long-term changes in the climate system itself which could alter the response of the atmosphere to SST anomalies. Thus, forecasts based on established La Niña teleconnections, even those considered highly statistically significant, could fail or even reverse sign in the future due to decadal time scale climate variability. Finally, Kiladis also noted that the linearity, or the reversal in the sign of anomalies in the same location between La Niña and El Niño, exists to some extent on the large spatial scale of his maps, but would likely break down with increased spatial resolution in many regions. This would result from, for example, the effect of mountains or of proximity to the ocean on the local climatic response to global-scale atmospheric circulation changes."

But despite the NOAA's daily graphics showing ALL the oceans cooling, at the end of the February the NOAA claimed the temperature anomaly increased

Watching the animation (and being wholly unable to perform a whole-ocean integration), I noted some very warm areas off South America and South Africa, and other warm areas (smaller) near Japan, and the U.S./Canadian East Coast. Perhaps these regions are why the anomaly increased.

[qam1]

Interesting about the La Nina but that makes my point, the oceans have cooled yet they are claiming they have warmed. Those little hot spots you mentioned haven't changed and they wouldn't make up for the amount of the cooling in the Indian Ocean alone anyhow.

But the new numbers for March are just out, again for the oceans they still show a warming trend.

2008 1 0.2473
2008 2 0.2928
2008 3 0.3057

Even worse, for the land they are claiming a +1.7764° anomaly which would make March 2008 the warmest month ever, and by a long shot! Previous hottest February 2002 @ 1.6505

With everything that happened this winter are they kidding us? I hope that's a typo. Actually I don't because that number is so unbelievable, if they try and run with it they will be laughed at.

No wonder you are so confident the temps will again return to record highs because it no matter what is really happening the numbers will be Hansenized to show warming.