Category Archives: Global warming

El Nino heat map - AFP / Getty images

El Nino has, apparently, arrived.

: El Nino heat map - AFP / Getty images

This cyclical weather phenomenon has apparently finally arrived. NOAA said it started in March 2015, although few of the physical signs appeared. The link below shows Australia, Japan and NOAA all agreeing … we’ll soon find out. What the article does not say is that the 1997-98 ENSO saw roughly half of the world’s corals die. In the face of global warming the corals and seagrass beds absorb a huge amount of CO2 during their photsynthesis. We’re talking similar levels of carbon-fixing to tropical rain forests; so if we get more major coral bleaching events then we are likely to be in a mess.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/what-is-el-nino-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-weather-phenomenon-10247049.html

Water World and the impact of climate change

Image: Image from MacMillan New Zealand World Atlas, p. 48

People in the industrialised world often don’t understand why climate change might be of any concern. Too often they frame their viewpoint in terms of how it affects their wage packet, or maintaining their daily lifestyle; that is understandable. It’s the only reality they might know.

But people on the other side of our planet have a very different understanding of reality. This is something we would like to share with you. Climate change is real, our weather patterns have changed; sea levels are creeping up, sometimes substantially. The salt affects what will grow in our already-poor soil; and may well kill the food crops that are already producing fruit. Now you might not care: you just go to the supermarket and shop … we often have no shops. Even if there is a small store the food has to come from very far away, adding further to greenhouse gas emissions. It doesn’t work.

The consumer world’s activities may well cause us to lose our homelands and the burial grounds of our ancestors. Please wake up. Thanks. 🙂

The Guardian: Losing paradise – now by Climate Change

Water, water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink

As many of us already know the most precious resource on Earth is drinking water ~ life soon collapses without it. Not only do we use it very unsustainably, but we have a passion for polluting much of the rest. Oh well 🙁

The Guardian: Water shortages leading food crises conflicts

Some like it hot, some never even think about it?

Looking at the graph I think we can safely say our world is getting warmer … maybe all those bullets some folk keep shooting round the place.

What is remarkable is that despite a 90% probability of an El Nino event occurring in December 2014 ::: it didn’t happen. I wonder what will  happen next?

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/02/14-15-hottest-years-record-2000-un-global-warming

Mediterranean Sea & benthic invertebrate mortality

You can download the PDF. The authors have looked at an extensive dataset and show a positive link to rising temperatures for mass mortalities of benthic invertebrates. I was also based in the Mediterranean for 15 years and noticed poor biodiversity ~ just the same few species in greater or lesser numbers depending on the location. I had some salinity tests done at my university and the eastern Mediterranean had increased about 15% from reported levels [normal Atlantic salinity is assumed to be 36 ppm; easterm Med was around 39-40 ppm, but I found 42 ppm at Kefalonia, Greece, in 2002].

Also the formation of Mediterranean Deep Water had moved from the Ionian to the Aegean in less than 10 years (I’ll try and find a ref for this).

PLoS ONE: Sea invertebrate mortality