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Right Whales And The Warming Atlantic | Earth Wise

October 25, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The warming of the Atlantic Ocean has driven the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale population from its traditional and protected habitat.  This has exposed the whales to more lethal ship collisions, increased entanglements with commercial fishing gear, and greatly reduced calving rates.

Since 2010, the calving rate has declined, and the right whale population has dropped by an estimated 26%.  Ten years ago, there were about 500 North Atlantic right whales; now there are an estimated 356.

These are some of the best studied whales in the oceans; scientists basically recognize each individual whale and when they are the victims of ship collisions or fishing entanglements, it is easy to identify which animal was killed.

Because of the warming climate, the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation – an important system of surface and deep currents – has slowed down, causing the Gulf Stream to move north.  This has injected warmer and saltier water into the Gulf of Maine.  The warming Gulf of Maine has reduced the abundance of copepods, tiny crustations that are the favorite snack of right whales.   This has reduced whale calving rates and forced the whales to move north to the cooler waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

For the past 6 years, more and more right whales have been observed feeding in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where there were no protections in place to prevent ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement.  In 2017 alone, 17 right whale deaths were confirmed.

According to a recent report from Cornell University and the University of South Carolina, unless its management is improved, right whale populations will decline and potentially become extinct in the coming decades.

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Warming Atlantic forces whales into new habitats, danger

Photo, posted December 8, 2016, courtesy of Sea to Shore Alliance/NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Ocean Currents And Climate Change | Earth Wise

September 22, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Climate change intensifies marine heatwaves

Oceans cover more than 70% of the earth and absorb 94% of incoming solar radiation.  As a result, oceans play a major role in the climate system.  With their massive size and capacity to store heat, oceans help keep temperature fluctuations in check.  But oceans also play a more active role.  Ocean currents are responsible for moving vast amounts of heat around the planet.  

According to a paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications, the world’s strongest ocean currents will experience more intense marine heatwaves than the global average in the coming decades.  These strong ocean currents play key roles in fisheries and ocean ecosystems.  

Sections of the Gulf Stream near the United States, the Kuroshio Current near Japan, the East Australian Current near Australia, and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current will all see more intense marine heatwaves over the next 30 years. 

Scientists from the University of Tasmania and CSIRO in Australia relied on high-resolution ocean modeling to carry out their research.  They confirmed the model’s accuracy by comparing outputs with observations from 1982-2018.  They then used the same model to project how marine heatwaves would alter with climate change out to 2050.

The model projects, for example, that intense marine heatwaves are more likely to form well off the coast of Tasmania, while more intense marine heatwaves along the Gulf Stream start to appear more frequently close to the shore from Virginia to New Brunswick, Canada. 

Marine heatwaves are on the rise globally, but knowing where they will occur and how much hotter they will be will help policymakers, ecologists, and fisheries experts in their regional decision-making. 

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Where marine heatwaves will intensify fastest: New analysis

Photo, posted April 17, 2016, courtesy of Nicolas Henderson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Ice Melt In Greenland

March 12, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warns that Greenland’s ice Is melting much faster than previously thought.  The ice loss rapidly accelerated around 2002-2003 and by 2012 the annual loss was nearly four times the rate in 2003.

Most of the new ice melt is in southwest Greenland, a part of the island that wasn’t known to be losing ice that rapidly and is not where most of the large glaciers are in Greenland.  The loss is coming from the land-fast ice sheet itself.

Data from NASA satellites and GPS stations scattered around Greenland’s coast shows that between 2002 and 2016, Greenland lost approximately 280 billion tons of ice per year.  That is enough melt to cover the entire states of Florida and New York hip deep in meltwater, as well as drowning Washington, D.C. and one or two other small states.

Global warming of just 1 degree Celsius is the main driver behind this massive meltdown of ice.  The temperature rise coupled with a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation causes rapid surface melt of the ice sheet during summers.  The Oscillation is a natural, irregular change in atmospheric pressure that brings warm, sunny weather to the western side of Greenland during its negative phase.

The Greenland ice sheet is 2 miles thick in some places and contains enough ice to raise sea levels 23 feet if it all melted.  The melting Greenland ice is already slowing the Gulf Stream, which is wreaking havoc with European weather.  If we don’t get a handle on global temperature rise, things are only going to get worse.

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Greenland’s ice is melting four times faster than thought—what it means

Photo, posted April 21, 2017, courtesy of Markus Trienke via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Rising Seas On The East Coast

June 6, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/EW-06-06-18-Rising-Seas-on-the-East-Coast.mp3

Global sea levels are rising by about a tenth of an inch per year, but in some places, the rise is faster… much faster.  From 2011 to 2015, sea levels rose up to 5 inches – an inch per year – in some locales along the Eastern Seaboard.  Places like Norfolk, Virginia and Miami are experiencing so-called sunny day flooding, something that had not been expected for decades according to climate projections.  So, what is going on?

[Read more…] about Rising Seas On The East Coast

Extreme Weather Increasing

May 11, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/EW-05-11-18-Extreme-Weather-Increasing.mp3

It sure seems like extreme weather is increasingly common:  floods, droughts, extreme rainfall, powerful snowstorms, hurricanes and so on.  But we tend to focus on recent events and often give them undue emphasis.  So, it is reasonable to ask whether extreme weather really is more common these days.

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Rising East Coast Seas

January 3, 2017 By EarthWise

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/EW-01-03-17-Rising-East-Coast-Seas.mp3

Sea levels are rising around the world because of melting ice as well as warming waters since water expands as its temperature goes up.  Average sea levels around the world are predicted to rise by about three feet by the end of the century as a consequence of the warming climate.

[Read more…] about Rising East Coast Seas

Cod And Global Warming

December 3, 2015 By WAMC WEB

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/EW-12-03-15-Cod-and-Global-Warming.mp3

Atlantic cod has been the basis of a major fishing industry in the Gulf of Maine for centuries and is a key species in the local ecosystem.  Overfishing decimated the population of cod and in 2010, fisheries managers imposed a series of restrictions on harvesting the fish in order to try to help the species to rebound.

[Read more…] about Cod And Global Warming

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