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Scientist Says Some Coral Reefs Can Be Saved 'If We Take Immediate Action'
Using computer models, researchers from Louisiana State University, Rice University, and the University of Colorado Boulder analyzed the "ominous threats" that ocean acidification and warming pose to coral reefs in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico under a "business as usual" emissions scenario and one in which planet-heating pollution is reduced.
Their study, published this summer in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, shows that "ocean temperatures increase by 2degC-3degC over the 21st century, and surpass reported regional bleaching thresholds by midcentury."
Bleaching is when corals expel algae--with which they have a symbiotic relationship--and turn white. Though the corals are not yet dead, they are at higher risk of mortality. Mass bleaching events around the world in recent years have heightened concerns about the fate of reefs--especially given governments' inadequate plans to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels driving the global climate emergency.
Study co-author Adrienne Correa, a marine biologist and assistant professor at Rice, said Wednesday, "The fact that we're going to see these changes by 2050 is a strong wake-up call."
"We get a lot of bad news about reefs, but we can still draw hope and motivation from this," she noted. "Some of the reefs that are included in this analysis are really special, like the Flower Garden Banks, and reefs off of Cuba and in some other parts of the Caribbean where there's still really high coral cover. We can help protect and keep the high coral cover reefs we have if we take immediate action to shift how much energy we use and where we get our energy."
"There are reefs in the Gulf that are really worth saving," Correa added. "Some of the healthiest reefs that we still have in the United States are in the areas covered by these projections."
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Allison Lawman, a postdoctoral associate in Colorado, explained that the study shows projected coral mortality through the next century is largely tied to the number of months each year that the reefs are exposed to high marine temperatures.
"There's always one month that is the hottest of the year," Lawman said. "Let's say it's August and the average baseline temperature for that month is 29degC in the region we're studying. A 'degree heating month' in that region is any month in the future that has a higher average temperature than 29degC."
The researchers found that under the business as usual scenario, degree heating months could become the new normal by the late 2100s, with parts of the Caribbean seeing such conditions for as many as 10 months per year.
"That's a huge number of months in which corals could experience thermal stress beyond the usual levels to which they are adapted," Lawman said. "These projections are very concerning... I think the takeaway message is that the time to act is now."
Rice climate scientist and assistant professor Sylvia Dee similarly stressed the urgency of reef-saving action.
"In one case, we have more time to mitigate, and in the other we don't," she said. "People need to be aware this is coming up fast, and the time to explore mitigation techniques is now."
The areas examined by the researchers "contain more than 10% of the world's reefs and host hundreds of fish species, and they provide more than $6 billion in economic benefits courtesy of fisheries, tourism, and other ecosystem services," according to Eos. "But over the past four decades, climate change and local stressors like overfishing, pollution, and invasive species have taken a heavy toll. On average, live coral covers less than 10% of the surface of most reefs in the region."
In a summary of the study, the researchers wrote that "we hope that this work will inform and streamline mitigation efforts to protect vulnerable coral reef ecosystems and the valuable benefits and resources they provide to local communities."
The scientists' calls for action come as world leaders prepare for COP27, a United Nations climate summit set to kick off in Egypt next month.
Coalition Says Biden Should Offer This Many Offshore Drilling Leases: Zero
That's what a coalition of 193 organizations--including four dozen groups from Alaska and the Gulf Coast--wrote to a pair of Biden administration leaders on Wednesday, the day before the conclusion of a comment period for the U.S. Department of the Interior's five-year offshore drilling plan.
"Offshore drilling is harming our communities, wreaking havoc on the environment, and contributing to the 'code red' crisis of global climate change," the coalition's letter argues. "The proposal of 95+ million acres for more oil and gas development turns its back on the people who have been living with the effects of the industry for generations. It locks in this pain for generations more."
"It overlooks the ongoing, unprecedented, and soon irreversible damage from fossil fuels, only to pad the pockets of the industry under the guise of 'energy security.' It undermines the broken promise of no new leases," the letter continues. "We maintain our unified demand despite Congress's recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains distressing language concerning offshore drilling."
While the Inflation Reduction Act has been heralded as a historic climate package, it conditions using federal lands and waters for wind and solar development on future fossil fuel leasing and enabled drilling in parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico previously blocked by the Biden administration.
"These provisions do not reflect public sentiment or the will of the people, who predominantly oppose continued offshore drilling," the letter asserts. "Of paramount concern is the perpetuation of the central and western Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Cook Inlet as the nation's sacrificial zones to offshore drilling."
"Insultingly, the proposal concludes that cumulative impacts of 11 additional sales will be felt less in these areas due to the very fact that they are already sacrificial zones replete with industrial development," the letter states. "This is akin to telling a cancer patient they do not need treatment, because they are already sick."
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The groups also highlighted that "catastrophic oil spills are one of the many inevitable consequences of offshore drilling," detailing some of the impacts of previous disasters.
"When combined with sea level rise and more extreme storms, offshore drilling also places coastal communities at the frontlines of the climate crisis," the coalition noted. "Communities and tribes in the area are already climate migrants, having been displaced due to fossil fuels and climate change."
The organizations also declared that "extractivism perpetuates the ethnocide of Indigenous people that began hundreds of years ago with the first colonists" and emphasized that the federal government "must ensure that it has free, prior, and informed consent--meaning consent that is given freely, by people fully informed of the consequences--before development can proceed."
Given the harms and risks of offshore drilling, the coalition told Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Amanda Lefton and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that "we must reverse course with swift and meaningful action, starting with no new leases in the final five-year program, and instead investing resources toward clean, justly sourced renewable energy."
Representatives from groups that signed on to the letter reiterated its main arguments in a statement Wednesday.
"In an era when we can plainly see that climate chaos is escalating and we know that we must reduce emissions immediately and drastically, continued fossil fuel extraction is a universal and existential threat," said Virginia Richard, Gulf program manager at SouthWings.
While the worsening climate emergency endangers all life on Earth, some campaigners stressed that the impacts of the fossil fuel-driven crisis are not equally endured.
"With rising sea levels causing more frequent and extreme storms, offshore drilling forces coastal communities right into the climate crisis' line of fire," said Friends of the Earth campaigner Raena Garcia. "People and ecosystems are enduring tremendous harm at the expense of the fossil fuel industry's ballooning wealth. We cannot continue down a path that overlooks the irreversible damage of Big Oil."
"Every oil spill begins with a lease sale and that is not the story we want to tell our future generations."
CLEO Institute executive director Yoca Arditi-Rocha pointed out that "in 2010, the Gulf Coast region of Florida was devastated by the BP Oil spill that caused 4.9 million barrels of oil to leak into the Gulf, making it the largest oil spill in U.S. history."
"Twelve years later, our Gulf has not recovered and our coastal communities are still feeling the direct and indirect impacts of our fossil fuel addiction," Arditi-Rocha added. "Hurricane Irma, Michael, and now Ian are a testament of that."
Taylor Kendal Smith, communications director at Cook Inletkeeper, noted that "every oil spill begins with a lease sale and that is not the story we want to tell our future generations."
"Alaskan economies, subsistence, tourism, and health depend upon our lands and waters," she said. "We have stood up repeatedly to say no to oil and gas leasing in our waters and frontline communities cannot afford for us to continue down this path."
UK Blocks Greenpeace From Boulder-Drops Designed to 'Protect Our Oceans'
After the group revealed plans to load more boulders onto the ship Arctic Sunrise in Poole Quay, "the Marine Management Organization (MMO) threatened Poole Harbour Commissioners with legal action if they allowed the boulders into port," Greenpeace said in a statement. "The gates to Bulwark Quay where the ship is berthed were also locked this morning, and the haulage company transporting the boulders also received a legal threat."
A week ago, in the wake of the fifth round of failed negotiations for a global ocean treaty, the Greenpeace ship sailed to a marine protected area (MPA) in the English Channel to drop boulders--emblazoned with names of celebrities and politicians supporting the action--to prevent bottom trawling, a fishing practice that involves dragging a net along the seafloor.
"Right now, there's an industrial fishing frenzy happening in U.K. waters, and what's our government doing about it?" Will McCallum, head of oceans at the group, said at the time. "Greenpeace U.K. has created this underwater boulder barrier as a last resort to protect the oceans. We'd much rather the government just did their job."
"Ocean protection is even more urgent now that our leaders have failed to help secure a global ocean treaty," he stressed, calling on the incoming Tory prime minister--Liz Truss, who took on the role Tuesday--to "protect local fishing communities and immediately ban industrial fishing in marine protected areas by tweaking commercial fishing licenses."
The campaigner reiterated Greenpeace's call for action to block destructive fishing in MPAs after the government thwarted plans "to protect our oceans" by dropping more boulders in the South West Deeps (East) MPA.
"The Marine Management Organization has put an astonishing amount of energy into trying to stop marine protection," he said Thursday. "They are using intimidation tactics to block ocean defenders, while brazenly allowing industrial fishing vessels to destroy seabed habitats in our so-called marine protected areas."
According to McCallum: "The MMO is failing the U.K.'s small-scale fishermen. Their livelihoods are quickly becoming unviable; many are returning home with empty nets while huge factory boats scoop up all the fish in sight. It's no wonder that two-thirds of our fish species are in decline."
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"It's clear that the government can act quickly when it wants to--so they have no excuse for their painstakingly slow approach to ocean protection," he declared. "We stand by our demand that industrial fishing is banned in every U.K. marine protected area, by adding a simple clause to commercial fishing licenses. We won't stop until our oceans are truly protected."
Greenpeace U.K. also continues to call for interactional action on ocean protection.
"Our blue planet is suffering. Precious marine habitats are home to lots of sealife and store huge amounts of carbon. But industrial fishing, the climate crisis, plastic pollution and more threaten them," Anna Diski wrote for the group's blog last week. "Scientists agree: To ensure marine ecosystem survival, we must protect at least 30% of the global oceans by 2030."
Scientists Find Craters--Including One Bigger Than a City Block--in Arctic Seafloor
An international team of researchers led by Charlie Paull, a geologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, and Scott Dallimore of the Geological Survey of Canada published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Permafrost is a mix of ice, rocks, sand, and soil that remains frozen year-round. The thawing of terrestrial permafrost in places like Siberia has fueled concerns about not only damage to at-risk infrastructure but also the release of planet-heating gases as well as ancient bacteria and viruses.
However, Paull and Dallimore's team analyzed changes in the permafrost that lies beneath Arctic waters. Specifically, they focused on 10 square miles of the Canadian Beaufort Sea, using underwater vehicle and ship-mounted sonar for surveys of the seafloor in 2010, 2013, 2017, and 2019.
The researchers found craters--including one that was 92 feet deep, 738 feet long, and 312 feet wide, or bigger than a city block of six-story buildings--as well as ice-cored hills resembling "pingos" previously documented on land.
"We know that big changes are happening across the Arctic landscape, but this is the first time we've been able to deploy technology to see that changes are happening offshore too," Paull noted in a statement Monday.
Unlike terrestrial permafrost thawing, the limited data available signals that human-caused global heating is not "driving the dramatic changes in the seafloor terrain," Paull explained. "Instead, heat carried in slowly moving groundwater systems is driving these changes."
Though the team connected the seafloor changes to climatic shifts related to the planet's emergence from the last ice age nearly 12,000 ago, Paull stressed that research like his first-of-its-kind study are important in an era of rising temperatures from human activities like burning fossil fuels.
"While the underwater sinkholes we have discovered are the result of longer-term, glacial-interglacial climate cycles, we know the Arctic is warming faster than any region on Earth," he said. "As climate change continues to reshape the Arctic, it's critical that we also understand changes in the submerged permafrost offshore."
Sue Natali, Arctic Program Director and senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts--who was not involved in the study--made a similar point to CNN on Monday.
"Changes described in this study are responding to events that occurred over the centennial to millennial time frame. That said, these changes can still impact climate if they are resulting in emissions of greenhouse gases as the subsea permafrost thaws," she explained.
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The underwater research was released the same day as multiple studies on terrestrial permafrost. One paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that alpine permafrost is expected to melt at a faster rate than Arctic permafrost under current conditions.
"Our findings were very surprising and highlight the fact that we need to put more effort into monitoring the stability of the permafrost in the alpine region," said lead author Feng Cheng of China's Peking University.
Paper co-author Carmala Garzione, dean of the University of Arizona College of Science, agreed. As she put it:
We need better and broader studies of the vulnerability of alpine regions under global warming scenarios. There's been a lot of focus on the stability of Arctic permafrost, because it covers more land area and contains a huge reservoir of organic carbon trapped in permafrost, but we also need to be aware that alpine regions stand to lose more permafrost proportionally and are important in understanding of potential carbon release under global warming scenarios.
Another study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, warned that peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia--which store up to 39 billion tons of carbon--are closer to a climatic tipping point than previously thought.
"Our modeling shows that these fragile ecosystems are on a precipice and even moderate mitigation leads to the widespread loss of suitable climates for peat permafrost by the end of the century," said lead author Richard Fewster of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.
"But that doesn't mean we should throw in the towel," he said. "The rate and extent to which suitable climate are lost could be limited, and even partially reversed, by strong climate change mitigation policies."
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