Not much ice left – warm blue arctic ocean due soon

Climate News Links on April 12, 2022

Blue oceans absorb more heat than ice caps. Loss of thick ice at winter’s end makes blue ocean likely soon. Expect more extreme weather!

Loss of thicker March sea ice from 1979 to 2022… Zack Labe, 12/04/2022

Featured Image: Arctic Sea Ice Thickness By Year. / Data: PIOMASS v2.1 (Zhang & Rothrock 2003) from 1979-2022 (averaged with ≥0.15 thickness) / Source: http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/ / Graphic: Zachary Labe (@ZLabe)

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Last Horseman: warming & near-term mass extinction

Climate News Links on March 29, 2022

A 2016 article lays out where we were then compared to past extinctions. We are now closer to point of no return. Warming must be stopped!

Coral bleaching in March 2016. Rapid rises of greenhouse gases in the past have been linked to major extinctions in the oceans. XL Catlin Seaview Survey / via the article.

by Katrin Meissner & Kaitlin Alexander , 24/03/2024 in the Conversation

Mass extinctions and climate change: why the speed of rising greenhouse gases matters

[G]reenhouse gases are rising faster than at any time since the demise of dinosaurs, and possibly even earlier. According to research published in Nature Geoscience this week, carbon dioxide (CO₂) is being added to the atmosphere at least ten times faster than during a major warming event about 50 million years ago.

We have emitted almost 600 billion tonnes of carbon since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are now increasing at a rate of 3 parts per million (ppm) per year.

With increasing CO₂ levels, temperatures and ocean acidification also rise, and it is an open question how ecosystems are going to cope under such rapid change.

Read the complete article….

Featured image: Moschorhinus kitchingi with Lystrosaurus. Basal Triassic of South Africa. Lystrosurus was one of the few large animals that survived the Permian-Triassic global mass extinction event anywhere on the planet. Source: Creator:Dmitry Bogdanov / Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.

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Can the Great Barrier Reef survive global warming?

Climate News Links on March 22, 2022

If the ocean becomes too hot, coral can’t do much to escape the heat. Loss of our natural wonder is likely if warming is not stopped.

Grumpy Turtle Films, Author provided

by Jodie L. Rummer & Scott F. Heron, 21/03/2022 in The Conversation

Adapt, move, or die: repeated coral bleaching leaves wildlife on the Great Barrier Reef with few options: To our horror, another mass coral bleaching event may be striking the Great Barrier Reef, with water temperatures reaching up to 3℃ higher than average in some places. This would be the sixth such event since the late 1990s, and the fourth since 2016.

Featured Image: Great Barrier Reef, Australia. From the article, (undated) by Adele Pedder, “Protecting the Coral Sea-the Cradle to the Great Barrier Reef” in The UN Chronicle. Shows a healthy reef populated by many different animals from corals to fish.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.