Oceans and Climate Change
Human induced climate change threatens coastal
and marine ecosystems through sea-level rise,
acidification, and changes in weather patterns
and water temperatures. These changes will also
seriously alter coastal development, the
reliability of ocean shipping, coastal
recreation and marine activities such as oil
platforms and aquaculture, thus adding economic
risks.
Oceans and climate are inextricably linked and oceans play a fundamental role in mitigating climate change by serving as a major heat and carbon sink. Oceans also bear the brunt of climate change, as evidenced by growing acidification, sea level increase, and changes in temperature and currents, all of which in turn impact the health of marine species, ecosystems, and our coastal communities. As concerns about climate change increase, the interrelationship between oceans and climate change must by recognized, understood, and incorporated into climate change policies.
Our oceans are especially vulnerable to the adverse impacts from human emissions of greenhouse gases. These impacts, which are already being experienced, include: air and water temperature changes, seasonal shifts, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, sea level rise, coastal inundation, coastal erosion, dead zones, new diseases, loss of marine mammals, changes in levels of precipitation, and fishery declines. In addition we can expect more extreme weather events (droughts, floods, storm surges) both in intensity and frequency. To protect our valuable marine ecosystems, coastal aesthetics and coastal communities, we must act.
Since the Industrial Revolution, mankind has increased the acidity of our oceans by 30% and has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere by over 35%, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. Other human activities have resulted in additional major contributions of greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxides. Added together, our oceans and we now face "unequivocal" warming of our climate, and an ocean with an altered pH.
Scientists, indigenous peoples, fishers, and others for years have been observing and documenting, often with alarm, substantial changes that are occurring as a result of climate change. Concerns are compounded by the fact that climate change is also making new marine ecosystem threats and challenges possible, such as Arctic shipping routes and new off-shore oil and gas leasing.
In all its potential forms, climate change is having and will, if unaddressed, continue to have even a more dramatic effect on the oceans now and into the future. The positive news is that there are critical adaptation measures that can be taken to reduce the impacts; and we also have greenhouse gas reduction solutions. Oceans may have a significant role in some of these renewable energy solutions. Notably, under any circumstance, it is critical that the public and our decision makers understand the impacts and costs of global warming on our oceans and coastal communities.
Global warming is having and will continue to have significant negative effects on our oceans and the communities that depend on them. The loss of ice sheets in the arctic is having and will increasingly have adverse consequences for many species of marine mammals like polar bears, walruses, and ice seals. Warmer oceanic and riparian waters is resulting in increased marine diseases and invasive species, changes in weather systems, modifications in species distribution patterns, dead zones and coral bleaching. Larger and more frequent storms are accelerating shoreline erosion, loss of community infrastructure, increased fishing risks and adverse health consequences. Ocean acidification will harm calcium carbonate plankton, adversely affect shellfish larvae, hinder the ability of corals to build new reefs and cause serious food chain disruptions. Sea level rise will cause habitat loss from inundation, infrastructure damage, and climate refugees that will need to be relocated as their island and coastal homelands are eliminated.
The overall solution to climate change is to significantly reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. This will require action at international, national, local and community levels, around the world.
Simultaneously, it is important to the health of the oceans—and us—that additional threats are avoided, and that our marine ecosystems are managed thoughtfully in light of the change that has occurred and is predicted to occur. It is also clear that by reducing the immediate stresses of excess human activities, we can increase the resilience of ocean species and ecosystems to long-term change. In this way, we can invest in ocean health and its "immune system" by eliminating or reducing the myriad of smaller ills from which it suffers.
SUGGESTING POLICY SOLUTIONS
In 2008 we drafted “A Coastal and Ocean Policy for the Next Administration,” a nonpartisan consensus document. This led to our helping to write the Presidential Climate Action Plan; Options for the New Administration & Congress, Oceans Chapter. In turn, this lead to “A Blueprint for a Coastal and Ocean Policy for the New Administration,” which was signed by 48 leading conservation organizations.
WHAT WE DO
Here at The Ocean Foundation, we view all of our projects, programs and grantmaking through the lens of climate change — asking ourselves how can any of our activities help promote healthy systems that are more resilient? That may be able to adapt more readily to the changes in climate? Or, will this project be vulnerable to the near-term effects of change and should that vulnerability affect our view of it as a worthwhile investment?
We at TOF buy carbon credits through NativeEnergy.com to offset our contribution to climate change. We are buying more credits than we need so that we are positive, not just carbon neutral. While we understand that carbon offset purchases remain an imperfect system, we work to identify those options with the highest ratings. We also provide subsidized public transportation passes to our staff. We work hard to identify ways in which we can ensure that we make as many green office choices as possible—from copier paper to cleaning supplies.
LEARN MORE
For more information on combating climate change and the work done The Ocean Foundation, please read:
Climate Change and the Oceans
Conflict Resolution for Addressing Climate Change with Ocean-Altering Projects
"Changing Climate, Changing Oceans" Video Adaptation to Climate Change and the Ocean
IUCN publication: The Ocean and Climate Change: Tools and Guidelines for Action
IUCN publication: Managing Natural Coastal Carbon Sinks
UNEP publication: Blue Carbon report
Florida Institute of Technology: Sea Level Rise Library
OUR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
Promoting Ecosystem and Species Resilience
One of the key strategies for protecting our oceans from the ravages of climate change is investing in resilience: promoting the ability of ecosystems and species to adapt to climate change or at least better withstand its adverse effects. Resilience is a key funding strategy for many of The Ocean Foundation’s grant making funds, such as our Coral Reef Fund and Marine Mammal Fund. These funds work to promote marine protected areas to increase survival prospects for species and habitat types; promote ridge to reef integrated management; limit coastal habitat development; and continue to support efforts to reduce or eliminate non-climate stresses to marine life, such as habitat destruction, dead zones, contaminated runoff, sedimentation, overfishing and bycatch.
Blue Climate Solutions
A program dedicated to advancing policy that promotes the roles coastal and ocean ecosystems play as natural carbon sinks, including the conservation of ecosystems such as seagrass meadows, mangrove swamps, and salt marshes. We also seek to promote marine science that further explores the role natural ocean ecosystems play in mitigating the effect of climate change.
Carbon Sequestration through Seagrass Bed Restoration
As part of an innovative solution to combat climate change, Colombia Sportswear, Bass Pro Shops, ABSOLUT® Vodka, Seagrass Recovery and The Ocean Foundation have teamed up to restore seagrass beds in coastal areas around major metropolitan areas. Similar to the positive effects of planting trees on land, planting seagrass will help increase the rate at which the near-shore coastal shelf sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. The public can help in this initiative by making donations through our SeaGrass Grow website.
The Ocean Project
Working collaboratively with the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the National Aquarium in Baltimore, The Ocean Project conducted and released a major report on public opinion about the oceans and how advocacy groups, aquariums, zoos, and museums can shape their message when developing their conservation communications strategies. The report, “America, the Ocean, and Climate Change: New Research Insights for Conservation, Awareness, and Action” was released in June of 2009 and funded by an NOAA ocean literacy grant. Survey data was based on 22,000 responses from adults in the United States and the overall confidence level is 95%.
Shipping Safety Partnership
Ocean currents and weather patterns are shifting even as dramatic increases in global shipping occur and the possibility emerges of new routes through highly vulnerable areas of the Arctic. China alone is expanding its commercial shipping fleet exponentially—in the form of giant vessels transporting millions of tons of goods that require significant fuel to traverse the oceans. The Shipping Safety Partnership began with the 2005 accident of the grain-carrying freighter Selendang Ayu, the biggest oil spill in Alaskan waters since the Exxon Valdez in 1984. The unusually stormy conditions and proximity to a maritime wildlife refuge contributed to the damage, but the real damage was due to a lack of proximate safety and rescue equipment and of continuing to permit single-hulled transport of fuel for use on board. The recent oil spills in Panama, San Francisco Harbor and the Black Sea all highlight the need for the kind of precautionary thinking that will be necessary to address the consequences of significant shifts and intensifying of stormy weather patterns.
Oceans and climate are inextricably linked and oceans play a fundamental role in mitigating climate change by serving as a major heat and carbon sink. Oceans also bear the brunt of climate change, as evidenced by growing acidification, sea level increase, and changes in temperature and currents, all of which in turn impact the health of marine species, ecosystems, and our coastal communities. As concerns about climate change increase, the interrelationship between oceans and climate change must by recognized, understood, and incorporated into climate change policies.
The surface ocean
currently absorbs about one-fourth of the CO2
emitted to the atmosphere from human
activities.
[Monaco Declaration 2008, was signed by 155 scientists from 26 nations.]
[Monaco Declaration 2008, was signed by 155 scientists from 26 nations.]
Our oceans are especially vulnerable to the adverse impacts from human emissions of greenhouse gases. These impacts, which are already being experienced, include: air and water temperature changes, seasonal shifts, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, sea level rise, coastal inundation, coastal erosion, dead zones, new diseases, loss of marine mammals, changes in levels of precipitation, and fishery declines. In addition we can expect more extreme weather events (droughts, floods, storm surges) both in intensity and frequency. To protect our valuable marine ecosystems, coastal aesthetics and coastal communities, we must act.
Human beings are now carrying out a
large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind
that could not have happened in the past nor be
reproduced in the future. Within a few
centuries we are returning to the atmosphere
and oceans the concentrated organic carbon
stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of
millions of years. This experiment, if
adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching
insight into the processes determining weather
and climate.
[Roger Revelle & Hans Suess, Carbon dioxide exchange between the atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase in atmospheric CO2 during the past decades, Tellus, 9, p 19-20, 1957]
[Roger Revelle & Hans Suess, Carbon dioxide exchange between the atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase in atmospheric CO2 during the past decades, Tellus, 9, p 19-20, 1957]
Since the Industrial Revolution, mankind has increased the acidity of our oceans by 30% and has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere by over 35%, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. Other human activities have resulted in additional major contributions of greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxides. Added together, our oceans and we now face "unequivocal" warming of our climate, and an ocean with an altered pH.
Scientists, indigenous peoples, fishers, and others for years have been observing and documenting, often with alarm, substantial changes that are occurring as a result of climate change. Concerns are compounded by the fact that climate change is also making new marine ecosystem threats and challenges possible, such as Arctic shipping routes and new off-shore oil and gas leasing.
In all its potential forms, climate change is having and will, if unaddressed, continue to have even a more dramatic effect on the oceans now and into the future. The positive news is that there are critical adaptation measures that can be taken to reduce the impacts; and we also have greenhouse gas reduction solutions. Oceans may have a significant role in some of these renewable energy solutions. Notably, under any circumstance, it is critical that the public and our decision makers understand the impacts and costs of global warming on our oceans and coastal communities.
Global warming is having and will continue to have significant negative effects on our oceans and the communities that depend on them. The loss of ice sheets in the arctic is having and will increasingly have adverse consequences for many species of marine mammals like polar bears, walruses, and ice seals. Warmer oceanic and riparian waters is resulting in increased marine diseases and invasive species, changes in weather systems, modifications in species distribution patterns, dead zones and coral bleaching. Larger and more frequent storms are accelerating shoreline erosion, loss of community infrastructure, increased fishing risks and adverse health consequences. Ocean acidification will harm calcium carbonate plankton, adversely affect shellfish larvae, hinder the ability of corals to build new reefs and cause serious food chain disruptions. Sea level rise will cause habitat loss from inundation, infrastructure damage, and climate refugees that will need to be relocated as their island and coastal homelands are eliminated.
The overall solution to climate change is to significantly reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. This will require action at international, national, local and community levels, around the world.
Simultaneously, it is important to the health of the oceans—and us—that additional threats are avoided, and that our marine ecosystems are managed thoughtfully in light of the change that has occurred and is predicted to occur. It is also clear that by reducing the immediate stresses of excess human activities, we can increase the resilience of ocean species and ecosystems to long-term change. In this way, we can invest in ocean health and its "immune system" by eliminating or reducing the myriad of smaller ills from which it suffers.
SUGGESTING POLICY SOLUTIONS
In 2008 we drafted “A Coastal and Ocean Policy for the Next Administration,” a nonpartisan consensus document. This led to our helping to write the Presidential Climate Action Plan; Options for the New Administration & Congress, Oceans Chapter. In turn, this lead to “A Blueprint for a Coastal and Ocean Policy for the New Administration,” which was signed by 48 leading conservation organizations.
WHAT WE DO
Here at The Ocean Foundation, we view all of our projects, programs and grantmaking through the lens of climate change — asking ourselves how can any of our activities help promote healthy systems that are more resilient? That may be able to adapt more readily to the changes in climate? Or, will this project be vulnerable to the near-term effects of change and should that vulnerability affect our view of it as a worthwhile investment?
We at TOF buy carbon credits through NativeEnergy.com to offset our contribution to climate change. We are buying more credits than we need so that we are positive, not just carbon neutral. While we understand that carbon offset purchases remain an imperfect system, we work to identify those options with the highest ratings. We also provide subsidized public transportation passes to our staff. We work hard to identify ways in which we can ensure that we make as many green office choices as possible—from copier paper to cleaning supplies.
LEARN MORE
For more information on combating climate change and the work done The Ocean Foundation, please read:
Climate Change and the Oceans
Conflict Resolution for Addressing Climate Change with Ocean-Altering Projects
"Changing Climate, Changing Oceans" Video Adaptation to Climate Change and the Ocean
IUCN publication: The Ocean and Climate Change: Tools and Guidelines for Action
IUCN publication: Managing Natural Coastal Carbon Sinks
UNEP publication: Blue Carbon report
Florida Institute of Technology: Sea Level Rise Library
OUR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
Promoting Ecosystem and Species Resilience
One of the key strategies for protecting our oceans from the ravages of climate change is investing in resilience: promoting the ability of ecosystems and species to adapt to climate change or at least better withstand its adverse effects. Resilience is a key funding strategy for many of The Ocean Foundation’s grant making funds, such as our Coral Reef Fund and Marine Mammal Fund. These funds work to promote marine protected areas to increase survival prospects for species and habitat types; promote ridge to reef integrated management; limit coastal habitat development; and continue to support efforts to reduce or eliminate non-climate stresses to marine life, such as habitat destruction, dead zones, contaminated runoff, sedimentation, overfishing and bycatch.
Blue Climate Solutions
A program dedicated to advancing policy that promotes the roles coastal and ocean ecosystems play as natural carbon sinks, including the conservation of ecosystems such as seagrass meadows, mangrove swamps, and salt marshes. We also seek to promote marine science that further explores the role natural ocean ecosystems play in mitigating the effect of climate change.
Carbon Sequestration through Seagrass Bed Restoration
As part of an innovative solution to combat climate change, Colombia Sportswear, Bass Pro Shops, ABSOLUT® Vodka, Seagrass Recovery and The Ocean Foundation have teamed up to restore seagrass beds in coastal areas around major metropolitan areas. Similar to the positive effects of planting trees on land, planting seagrass will help increase the rate at which the near-shore coastal shelf sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. The public can help in this initiative by making donations through our SeaGrass Grow website.
The Ocean Project
Working collaboratively with the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the National Aquarium in Baltimore, The Ocean Project conducted and released a major report on public opinion about the oceans and how advocacy groups, aquariums, zoos, and museums can shape their message when developing their conservation communications strategies. The report, “America, the Ocean, and Climate Change: New Research Insights for Conservation, Awareness, and Action” was released in June of 2009 and funded by an NOAA ocean literacy grant. Survey data was based on 22,000 responses from adults in the United States and the overall confidence level is 95%.
Shipping Safety Partnership
Ocean currents and weather patterns are shifting even as dramatic increases in global shipping occur and the possibility emerges of new routes through highly vulnerable areas of the Arctic. China alone is expanding its commercial shipping fleet exponentially—in the form of giant vessels transporting millions of tons of goods that require significant fuel to traverse the oceans. The Shipping Safety Partnership began with the 2005 accident of the grain-carrying freighter Selendang Ayu, the biggest oil spill in Alaskan waters since the Exxon Valdez in 1984. The unusually stormy conditions and proximity to a maritime wildlife refuge contributed to the damage, but the real damage was due to a lack of proximate safety and rescue equipment and of continuing to permit single-hulled transport of fuel for use on board. The recent oil spills in Panama, San Francisco Harbor and the Black Sea all highlight the need for the kind of precautionary thinking that will be necessary to address the consequences of significant shifts and intensifying of stormy weather patterns.