The Effects Of Climate Change On Oceans

Oceans cover approximately 75% of Earth 's surface and are vital to this planet and the people who inhabit it. Oceans provide food, natural resources, and recreation for nearly everyone in this world. Unfortunately Oceans have been receiving mass amount of pollutants including oil spills, toxic waste dumping, and industrial dumping. These pollutants will have negative impacts on the wildlife in the ocean, as we are seeing already with the Coral Reefs, and soon enough it will begin to affect our lives as well.

Climate change is affecting oceans tremendously. Threats faced by the ocean planet seem uncontrollable. In the face of overfishing, pollution, and climate change it may seem like a drop in the bucket. With the amount of light reaching onto the shore, plants should be reduced in order for the rising sea levels to fall. Oceans have also absorbed tons of carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere causing ocean acidification. Coral bleaching is caused by high water temperatures leading to coral death, and can turn into a negative impact on the entire coral ecosystem. We intend to provide options a single person can take in order to help the cause and make a difference. Our mission is to conserve the Earth’s living heritage, our global

Over the years, climate change has affected marine species because it has increased the ocean temperature, causing it to get warmer, which is causing a negative impact to most marine organisms like echinoderms and cnidarians (Quinn, 2016). In many cases, the optimum temperature of growth increased 1-6°C, which created harmful effects on stages of development (Quinn, 2016). In some cases such as the American lobster (Homarus americanus), warming of the ocean had caused smaller body sizes (Le Bris et al., 2016). Even though there is some research that showed that the warm temperature could also benefit the lobster’s population, most of their population has declined in the warmest and southernmost regions of the lobster’s range in places like southern New England and Long Island Sound (Quinn, 2016).

The rise of sea levels are projected to increase warmer waters from one and a half to two degrees in Central North Pacific in 2050, 1.9 to 2.6 degrees in Northern Islands, and also two to five degrees in the Caribbean at the end of this century. This rise of temperature decreases the life of ecosystems in the ocean and resulting in less freshwater for

Irrespective of its cause, the impacts of climate change include more frequent and severe weather, higher death rates, dirtier air, higher wildlife extinction rates, and higher sea levels (IPCC, 2014). Although each of these impact areas are significant and worthy of further discussion, it is the ramifications of sea level rise that brought me to discuss climate action today.

In present day, the ocean is warmer now than it has been in the past 50 years. In the article, " Signs of Climate Change", it says that in 1960 the average ocean tempature change was -.3 degrees but in 2010 the average tempature change in the ocean was .6 degrees. Where I live the tempature is still continuing to rise more and more each year. With warmer ocean tempature comes rising sea level. In present day the sea level has rose by 7 inches in the past 100 years. In 2100 th tempature is around 15 inches higher than it is in present day. Both of these things are causing more tropical storms to happen and is also making the beach less and less

The Sea Level has increased over the past 200 years as average global temperatures have increased. The rise is due to two factors, the freshwater being added to the oceans from ice melt in the cryosphere, and the thermal expansion of the oceans due to rises in sea temperature. The sea level has risen 6 to 8 inches in the past 100 years. It is predicted to rise another 50 to 90 centimeters in the next century. As the sea level rises it’s jeopardizing rapidly growing coastal communities, which causes evacuation in some areas causing people to lose their homes. Sea level is the effect

Decades of research suggest that sea-levels are rising, and will continue to rise as a result of climate change. This rise will have the most immediate and significant impact on

Since the 1950s, the amount of heat stored in the ocean has significantly increased. Ocean heat content determines sea surface temperature, it also affects sea level and currents. An overall average of the world’s oceans. Since 1880 sea level has risen at a rate of roughly six-tenths of an inch per decade. In recent years, the rate of increase has increased more rapidly to more than an inch per decade. Sea level has risen the most with an increase of more than 8 inches between 1960 and 2015, along parts of the Gulf coast and the Mid-Atlantic coast. However, sea level has decreased relative to the land in parts of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

Anthropogenic activity has led to greatly increased emissions of greenhouses gases. Increased temperatures, acidification and stratification are all affected by increased carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. These symptoms of climate change have direct and indirect effects on to marine ecosystems, all of which start at the major primary producers of the oceans: phytoplankton.

The world’s oceans absorb around a quarter of emissions caused by human activities; the burning of fossil fuels, for example. This reduces the speed of climate change, and about 40% of this absorption happens in the Southern Ocean, which surrounds the Antarctic. Carbon dioxide gets soaked in from the air and is then released by the Ocean every year, but with a net uptake. It is the planet’s strongest ocean carbon sink. Earlier studies had suggested that the rising emissions caused by humans had caused over-saturation at the Southern Ocean during the 1980s, and researchers estimated that the efficiency of this body of water to absorb

Climate research is both urgent and uncertain. Changes in climate affect nearly every aspect of our lives, from food security to public health. Unfortunately, limited or biased observational data combined with a limited understanding of complex phenomena in the ocean (the dominant driver of global heat and carbon uptake) presents hurdles for climate scientists. Uncertain results often lead to public skepticism and stall environmental policy efforts; these delays threaten populations who often contribute the least to anthropogenic climate change and yet are likely to suffer the most. The global need for reliable climate research drives my interest in climate and the ocean’s role in the climate system.

     Now that we are aware that global warming is influencing our world’s oceans, we must look at the affects that it is having. I did not find any positive affects of global warming on the oceans. It is sad to say, but I was left with only the negative. One of the effects that warmer temperatures have on the oceans is that they disrupt the ocean circulation rate (Pearce, 1996). As I previously mentioned, oceans must maintain all of its characteristics properly. Warmer temperatures in the atmosphere affect circulation rates in the oceans. If circulation rates in the oceans are altered, then everything in the oceanic environment becomes changed. The oceanic currents become affected, as well.

The main factors in this climate change are observed to be the increase in temperatures and the resulting acidification of the oceans. The previously mentioned changes and others in the report are readily observable, such as the uptake of anthropogenic carbon since 1750 that has led to the ocean becoming more acidic, with an average decrease in pH of 0.1 units and in some instances blatantly obvious, even to the average layperson. It is difficult to conclude what the rate of change in the future will be and the effects of observed ocean acidification on the marine biosphere.

One of the most serious effects of global warming, as it continues to intensify, is the increase in the ocean levels. Thermal expansion of the ocean and glacial melting are likely to cause a .5 to 1.5 meter rise in the ocean level by the year 2100. As the ocean level rises and if no protection is provided, many freshwater supplies could be jeopardized. Tens and possibly hundreds of millions of