Log in or Sign up

ocean conditions are changing due to Rapid Global Climate Shift

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by Boston, Jan 10, 2011.

Thread Status:: Not open for further replies.

Page 121 of 308

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

NASA: Sea Surface Salinity

Illustration of the global distribution of sea surface salinity. Highest concentrations (over 37 practical salinity units) of salt water are present the mid-Atlantic Ocean and lower-Atlantic off the coast of Brazil, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Lower concentrations are found near the Arctic and Antarctic and the coastal regions of east Asia and western North America. Surface salinities of the ocean. The distributions of salinity are quite different from temperature. High concentrations are usually in the center of the ocean basins away from the mouths of rivers, which input fresh water. High concentrations are also in sub-tropical regions due to high rates of evaporation (clear skies, little rain, and prevailing winds) and in landlocked seas in arid regions. At high latitudes, salinity is low. This can be attributed to lower elevation rates and the melting of ice that dilutes seawater. To sum up, salinity is low where precipitation is greater than evaporation, mainly in coastal or equatorial regions. Credit: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Click to expand...

Changes in salt concentration at the ocean surface affect the weight of surface waters. Fresh water is light and floats on the surface, while salty water is heavy and sinks. Together, salinity and temperature determine seawater density and buoyancy, driving the extent of ocean stratification, mixing, and water mass formation. Greater salinity, like colder temperatures, results in an increase in ocean density with a corresponding depression of the sea surface height. In warmer, fresher waters, the density is lower resulting in an elevation of the sea surface. These height differences are related to the circulation of the ocean. The changes in density bring warm water poleward on the surface to replace the sinking water driving the global thermohaline (heat & salt) circulation within the ocean called the Global Conveyor Belt.

Generalized model of the thermohaline circulation: 'Global Conveyor Belt' This illustration shows cold deep high salinity currents circulating from the north Atlantic Ocean to the southern Atlantic Ocean and east to the Indian Ocean. Deep water returns to the surface in the Indian and Pacific Oceans through the process of upwelling. The warm shallow current then returns west past the Indian Ocean, round South Africa and up to the North Atlantic where the water becomes saltier and colder and sinks starting the process all over again.
Click to expand...

ImaginaryNumber, Sep 17, 2012

#1801

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member
Mother Jones: Big Changes in Ocean Salinity Intensifying Water Cycle

A paper in Science today finds rapidly changing ocean salinities as a result of a warming atmosphere have intensified the global water cycle (evaporation and precipitation) by an incredible 4 percent between 1950 and 2000. That's twice the rate predicted by models...

At this rate, the authors calculate:

The global water cycle will intensify by a whopping 16 percent in a 2°C warmer world

The global water cycle will intensify by a frightening 24 percent in a 3°C warmer world...

The changes will not be uniform across the globe, but trend toward increased drying of arid areas and increased flooding of wet areas. And the resulting changes in freshwater availability are likely to be far more destabilizing to human societies and ecosystems than warming alone...
Click to expand...
Attached Files:
- Surface Salinity Changes, 1950-2000.jpg
  
  File size:
  
  189.7 KB
  
  Views:
  
  673
ImaginaryNumber, Sep 17, 2012

#1802

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

Underwater Times: Arctic Ocean Has Become Less Salty, More Unstable

The freshwater content of the upper Arctic Ocean has increased by about 20 percent since the 1990s. This corresponds to a rise of approximately 8,400 cubic kilometers and has the same magnitude as the volume of freshwater annually exported on average from this marine region in liquid or frozen form. This result is published by researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute in the journal Deep-Sea Research. The freshwater content in the layer of the Arctic Ocean near the surface controls whether heat from the ocean is emitted into the atmosphere or to ice. In addition, it has an impact on global ocean circulation.

Around ten percent of the global mainland runoff flows into the Arctic via the enormous Siberian and North American rivers in addition to relatively low-salt water from the Pacific. This freshwater lies as a light layer on top of the deeper salty and warm ocean layers and thus extensively cuts off heat flow to the ice and atmosphere. Changes in this layer are therefore major control parameters for the sensitive heat balance of the Arctic. We can expect that the additional amount of freshwater in the near-surface layer of the Arctic Ocean will flow out into the North Atlantic in the coming years. The amount of freshwater flowing out of the Arctic influences the formation of deep water in the Greenland Sea and Labrador Sea and thus has impacts on global ocean circulation...
Click to expand...

ImaginaryNumber, Sep 17, 2012

#1803

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

Frosty said: ↑

Just seen a documentary about sea grass and the turtles that live off it. All dying off.
Click to expand...

Sea Turtle Ecology

...Sea Turtle Ecology / Eating Seagrass

Very few animals actually feed on sea grass and the sea turtle is one of them. Sea grass like terrestrial grass needs to be cut short to be healthy. It needs to be cropped short rather than just growing longer blades so that it can grow across the ocean bottom.

Sea turtles and manatees function like grazing animals to crop the grass which helps maintain the health of beds of the sea grass. Recent studies have shown that there have been decreases in the areas of sea grass beds. This decline may be connected to declining numbers of sea turtles.

Sea Turtle Ecology / Keeping the Marine System Alive

The importance of sea grass beds lies in the fact that they are breeding and developmental grounds for many species of fish, shellfish, and crustaceans. The loss and extinction of grass sea beds would lead to the loss and extinction of many species of marine life that humans harvest as food.

This would in effect lower the levels of materials available to the food chain. This would eventually lead to a chain reaction that would lead to many more marine species being lost. This state of affairs would result to an inevitable impact on humans.

If sea turtles go extinct this will result in the severe decline of sea grass beds. All animals depending on their survival upon the sea grass beds will also be impacted. In an ecosystem all components are vital. If one component is lost then others will eventually follow...
Click to expand...

ImaginaryNumber, Sep 17, 2012

#1804

Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 2,949
Likes: 67, Points: 48, Legacy Rep: 719
Location: Melbourne/Singapore/Italy

powerabout Senior Member

how about QE again..shares go up, oil goes up, food goes up, rich get richer poor get poorer..nice policy if you dont live there.
Does reducing your global carbon footprint only apply to the rich, never mind they poor are paying to help as well ( did they have a choice?)

Boat builders are not necessarily Boat designers who are not necessarily Engineers who are not builders who are not designers.....

powerabout, Sep 17, 2012

#1805

Frosty Previous Member

I dont care if the sea goes fresh. I hate sticky towels after a swim.

Any way sharks are horrible and I dont like them and whales can go back on land where they came from to a big dog.

Whats the problem. Ok ships may float a bit lower but thats all I can see is a problem.

No more barnacles --yipeee,--- and no more anti fouling. Millions saved in ships maintenance and paint cost.

BUT we got to stop crapping in it or it will be a toilet without salt!!!

Hey lets stop crapping in it anyway,--that a good idea.

Frosty, Sep 17, 2012

#1806

Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 5,854
Likes: 403, Points: 93, Legacy Rep: 2489
Location: Control Group

hoytedow Carbon Based Life Form

Can't hold it any longer? Get an incinerator toilet.

http://ecojohn.com/ecojohn_sr.html

hoytedow, Sep 17, 2012

#1807

whitepointer23 Previous Member

whitepointer23 said: ↑

next thing we need to do is torpedo that super trawler that is here to wipe out our fish stocks like they did in the northern hemisphere.
Click to expand...

great to hear this trawler has been banned from our waters. sometimes the people do get heard.

whitepointer23, Sep 18, 2012

#1808

Frosty Previous Member

Banned or obsolete? The price of fish and the lack of them is sending them for scrap.

I just come back from the super market a kilo of lean pork is 3 dollars now!!

Frosty, Sep 18, 2012

#1809

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

Rollingstone: Climate Change and the End of Australia

Want to know what global warming has in store for us? Just go to Australia, where rivers are drying up, reefs are dying, and fires and floods are ravaging the continent
Click to expand...

…The Murray-Darling Basin, which serves as the country's breadbasket, has suffered a decades-long drought, and what water is left is becoming increasingly salty and unusable, raising the question of whether Australia, long a major food exporter, will be able to feed itself in the coming decades.

The oceans are getting warmer and more acidic, leading to the all-but-certain death of the Great Barrier Reef within 40 years …

…prosperous nations of the world have failed to take action to reduce the risk of climate change, in part because people in prosperous nations think they're invulnerable. They're under the misapprehension that, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Tom Schelling puts it, "Global warming is a problem that is going to primarily affect future generations of poor people." To see how foolish this reasoning is, one need only look at Australia, a prosperous nation that also happens to be right in the cross hairs of global warming. "Sadly, it's probably too late to save much of it," says Joe Romm, a leading climate advocate who served as assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration…

With nine degrees of warming, computer models project that Australia will look like a disaster movie…

"We can't afford to spend 10 percent of our GDP building sea walls and trying to adapt to climate change…

With so much at risk, you might expect Australia to be at the forefront of the clean-energy revolution and the international effort to cut carbon pollution. After all, the continent's vast, empty deserts were practically designed for solar-power installations… But it was an empty gesture. Australia remains deeply addicted to coal, which not only provides 80 percent of its electricity but serves as its leading export…

Most media outlets gloss over the complexities of the science – an unsurprising omission, given that Australia is home to Rupert Murdoch's media empire [including that joke known as Fox News] – and instead reassure readers that hurricanes have been hitting Queensland for thousands of years…

According to Australia's top scientists, a hotter planet equals a much higher risk of catastrophic fires. Even in a "low global-warming scenario" with modest increases in carbon pollution, catastrophic fires will ravage Victoria every five to seven years by 2020, and every three to four years by 2050. Under a "high global-warming scenario" – essentially the track the world is on today – catastrophic fires will occur every year in some regions…

As the Earth heats up, bleaching has become increasingly common at reefs around the world. A mass bleaching in 1998 killed 90 percent of the corals in the Indian Ocean. Last year, reefs bleached throughout the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean and off the coasts of Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Unless we find a way to cool the planet, 95 percent of the reefs on the planet, including the Great Barrier Reef, are expected to be subject to severe bleaching by 2050…

By the end of the century, if nothing changes, the world's oceans are expected to be 150 percent more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution – creating a loss of corals that will be irreversible. "The potential consequences of such acidification are nothing less than catastrophic," says Veron. "The ocean is going to suck up CO2, and there is not much we can do about it – other than get serious about cutting the amount of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere..."

When the Big Dry ended last September and it finally started raining in the town of Toowoomba, everyone practically fell to their knees in gratitude …But then the rains kept coming. By late December, the ground was saturated and fields were flooding… In early January, eight inches of rain fell in five days…Eventually, the floodwaters from Toowoomba and the surrounding region all poured into the Brisbane River, which flows through Australia's third-largest city. The river rose 15 feet above normal, breaking its banks and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents...
Click to expand...

ImaginaryNumber, Sep 18, 2012

#1810

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

NASA: The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change

The greatest barrier to public recognition of human-made climate change is probably the natural variability of local climate. How can a person discern long-term climate change, given the notorious variability of local weather and climate from day to day and year to year?

The question is important because actions to stem emissions of gases that cause global warming are unlikely until the public appreciates the significance of global warming and perceives that it will have unacceptable consequences. Thus when nature seemingly provides evidence of climate change it needs to be examined objectively by the public, as well as by scientists.

Therefore it was disappointing that most early media reports on the heat wave, widespread drought, and intense forest fires in the United States in 2012 did not mention or examine the potential connection between these climate events and global warming. Is this reticence justified?...
Click to expand...

Temperature anomaly distribution: The frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-1980 mean) in units of local standard deviation (horizontal axis). Area under each curve is unity. Image credit: NASA/GISS.
Click to expand...

Frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local June-July-August temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-1980 mean) for Northern Hemisphere land in units of local standard deviation (horizontal axis). Temperature anomalies in the period 1951-1980 match closely the normal distribution ("bell curve", shown in green), which is used to define cold (blue), typical (white) and hot (red) seasons, each with probability 33.3%. The distribution of anomalies has shifted to the right as a consequence of the global warming of the past three decades such that cool summers now cover only half of one side of a six-sided die, white covers one side, red covers four sides, and an extremely hot (red-brown) anomaly covers half of one side. Image credit: NASA/GISS.
Click to expand...

Wildfire frequency and spring-summer temperature in the western United States. Image credit: Westerling et al. (2006).
Click to expand...

ImaginaryNumber, Sep 18, 2012

#1811

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

National Association of Science Writers: Can we feed the world without destroying the planet?

With Earth's population expected to reach 9 billion by 2040, the question of how to feed the world has never been more pressing…

In a business-as-usual scenario, that could mean a dramatic expansion of the farmed area on the planet, on the order of the entire arable land of the United States. There's a problem, researchers said: This suitable new farmland doesn't exist.

As incomes increase, preferences shift toward more meat-based diets. Such diets require a lot more calories to produce, leading to "surprising increases in demand for food around the world," Tilman said…

The only other way to produce enough food will be to drastically expand the farmed area of the planet. That could mean converting 40 percent of the remaining tropical forests and savannas to farmland, he said—a devastating blow to stressed ecosystems.

Climate change will make the challenge of crop expansion even more difficult. Assessing historical climate and crop report data in various regions around the world, Lobell found that higher temperatures almost always lead to decreased yields…
Click to expand...

ImaginaryNumber, Sep 19, 2012

#1812

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

New York Times: Climate Change and the Food Supply

...We have had two huge spikes in global food prices in five years that were driven largely by chaotic weather. And this year we may be in the early stages of a third big jump. Droughts and heat waves have damaged crops in many producing countries this year, including the United States and India...

In the West, raw ingredients make up only a small fraction of the cost of the food most people eat, and price spikes tend to be felt only moderately for that reason. But in parts of the world where people subsist on staple grains, Oxfam warns, a doubling or more of grain prices from 2010’s already high levels would probably be devastating. The price spikes occurring over the last decade have already led to some of the biggest increases in global hunger in generations...

So another new report, from researchers at the University of Minnesota, may prove especially interesting to anyone worried simultaneously about food security and the environment. It offers hope that both problems can be tackled at once. This report, a scientific study published last week in the journal Nature, is also the result of computer modeling. The researchers asked whether it would be possible to increase global yields while reducing the use of agricultural inputs like water and fertilizers...The report found that the use of nitrogen fertilizer, the source of the nitrous oxide that is helping to warm the planet, could be cut by 28 percent without affecting yields for corn, wheat and rice, the world’s three most important grains. Use of phosphate fertilizer, the focus of fears about a long-term shortage, could be reduced by 38 percent, the researchers found...
Click to expand...

ImaginaryNumber, Sep 19, 2012

#1813

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 436
Likes: 59, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 399
Location: USA

ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

Salt Lake Tribune: Crop scientists seeking hardier breeds for drought, climate change

"The single largest limitation for agriculture worldwide is drought," said Andrew Wood, a professor of plant physiology and molecular biology at Southern Illinois University…

Ron Gill, a rancher who also heads the animal science department at Texas A&M University, said research has been under way for years to develop cattle that can withstand heat and grow on lower-quality forage…

In seed laboratories, they are developing corn varieties with larger roots to absorb more water and smaller tassels that save more of the plant’s energy for making kernels. The new strains also have leaves that use less water for transpiration, the process that releases excess moisture after photosynthesis...

Wood is studying resurrection plants — mosses and ferns that dry up and look dead after being deprived of water for weeks but spring back to life when watered. The goal is to isolate genes that allow those plants to recover quickly from drought and transfer those traits to crops such as corn…
Click to expand...

ImaginaryNumber, Sep 19, 2012

#1814

Frosty Previous Member

Im not sure 100% if all these interesting posts are 100% correct.

I can say 100% that today we had precipitation like ive never seen before. I can tell you 100% that I would have drowned had I tried to walk in it.

I tried holding my breath but had to do the breast stroke to get across the road.

When I got there I came up and floated and bumped my head on a boat.

Frosty, Sep 19, 2012

#1815

(You must log in or sign up to reply here.)

Page 121 of 308

Advertisement:

< Missing tourists in a dinghy | Attracting New Boaters....the Youth >

Loading...

Similar Threads

Design of an Autonomous Surface Craft for Oceanographic Survey

sun, Dec 27, 2023, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

0

Views:

1,904

sun

Dec 27, 2023
"live in the ocean" meme suffers setback

Squidly-Diddly, Oct 1, 2022, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

7

Views:

2,418

fallguy

Oct 3, 2022
Volvo Ocean Race - John Fisher

JosephT, Mar 29, 2018, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

11

Views:

2,934

Angélique

Mar 31, 2018
Real Ocean News

hoytedow, Jan 15, 2018, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

147

Views:

25,030

hoytedow

Jul 23, 2020
Ocean News

ImaginaryNumber, Oct 8, 2015, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

3,965

Views:

451,876

Boat Design Net Moderator

Jul 26, 2020
Man rescued from floating bubble (tries to go across ocean to Bermuda 1000 miles)

Waterwitch, Oct 5, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

44

Views:

8,514

Rurudyne

Oct 30, 2014
Cement/Concrete Saves Vessel Mid Ocean

Milehog, Jul 4, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

1

Views:

4,690

hoytedow

Jul 4, 2014
Is the ocean broken?

daiquiri, Oct 24, 2013, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

2,748

Views:

220,947

Boat Design Net Moderator

Jan 29, 2022
Kids facing the Oceans Plastic Cleanup Problem

rwatson, Sep 24, 2013, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

0

Views:

2,923

rwatson

Sep 24, 2013
Free ride across the pacific ocean

BPL, Apr 6, 2013, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating

Replies:

0

Views:

3,242

BPL

Apr 6, 2013

Forum posts represent the experience, opinion, and view of individual users. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post.
When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. Your circumstances or experience may be different.

Thread Status:: Not open for further replies.