Cassology

Global warming affects our daily lives but we rarely think about its’ affects on aquatic life. At each respective pole, global warming melts ice bergs causing the rise of sea levels and also hurts species like the polar bear and penguin. Ocean acidification is also a big problem, as well as an overflow of CO2 with about twenty-two million tons enters our oceans daily. Ninety-three point four percent of global warming goes to the ocean which in turn affects the weather making cyclones and other things more prone to happen. Some people believe that the warming of oceans are due to climate change is unstoppable because things like greenhouse gases and bio carbohydrates don’t help. Global warming is defined as a term used to describe a gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and its oceans, a change that is believed to be permanently changing the Earth's climate. Global warming not only affects nature it also affects each and every person’s daily life on the face of this earth. A quick example of the direct affect is the earth’s food supply, the actual warming of globe is changing the precipitation patterns making some areas experience drought and other areas to experience floods. A lot of food crops aren’t equipt for the drastic changes in their habitat in turn making food prices rise (Didier). If that’s only one of the affects on land with land which only takes up about twenty-nine percent of the globe, imagine global warming’s affect on aquatic life. A lot of people don’t focus on how heavily global warming impacts aquatic life. Aquatic life is an umbrella term that means consisting of, relating to, or being in water: an aquatic environment of either living solely or chiefly in or on the water: animals and plants. With about seventy-one percent of the earth’s surface being covered in water, the effects on aquatic life needs to become a more discussed global issue. Global warming can be easily described as greenhouse gasses are trapping energy in the earth’s atmosphere which is causing the warming in the earth’s climate but it is not that simple, there are many more variables to the equation. Greenhouse gasses are defined as a gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation, e.g., carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons. Greenhouse gases exist because of the burning of fossil fuels and land-use change. When we burn fossil fuels: oil, coal and gas, to generate electricity and power our vehicles, we produce the heat-trapping or greenhouse gases that cause global warming. As the global population has increased and our reliance on fossil fuels (such as coal, oil and natural gas) has been firmly solidified, so emissions of these gases have risen.

Greenhouse gas emissions are made up of eighty-two percent carbon dioxide, nine percent methane, six percent nitrous oxide, and three percent fluorinated gases. Land-use changes are the second largest reason for greenhouse gases, land-use changes are defined as a process by which human activities transform the landscape for example deforestation. Greenhouse gasses cause the greenhouse affect which is the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface. As carbon dioxide levels increase, the pace of global warming accelerates. Satellite measurements confirm that less heat is escaping the atmosphere today than in the past forty years ago. Though other heat-trapping gases also play a role, carbon dioxide is the primary contributor to global warming. The ocean absorbs about a quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere every year, so as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase, so do the levels in the ocean. Water is critically important to projecting the future climate change but is fairly poorly measured and understood. Since global warming is a rising epidemic then the residents of this earth should be more educated on its’ many impacts on aquatic life and how it in turn impacts their lives.

Global warming is all about the earths’ rising temperature. Global warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of some types of extreme weather. For example, global warming is causing more rain to fall in heavy downpours. There are also longer dry periods between rainfalls. This, coupled with more evaporation due to higher temperatures, intensifies drought. Weather is an entity that can change drastically in hours but climate is a long term entity that is measured in years and takes a lot for the climate to change. Global climate change is expected to affect temperature and precipitation patterns, oceanic and atmospheric circulation, rate of rising sea level, and the frequency, intensity, timing, and distribution of hurricanes and tropical storms. It also increase our resilience to extreme weather there has to be an extreme reduction of global warming pollution/carbon dioxide. Hurricane Katrina was a very vulnerable time for the world, some students who got displaced by Katrina have now dedicated their time to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. The students say that climate change is not just an environmental or economic issue, it has impacts on real people and their communities (United States Congress. House. Select Committee of Energy Independence and Global Warming). Global warming is linked to climate change. So while a few rouge temperature days won’t affect the climate of a specific area, if the climate changes in a specific area then the temperature is a domino effect. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports a linear warming trend over the last fifty years at an average rate of point thirteen degrees Celsius per decade, and foresees a further warming of about point one to point two degrees Celsius per decade, even if greenhouse gases and aerosol emissions will be kept constant (IPCC 2007). “One of the most important coupling mechanisms occurs in the Earth’s surface temperature – atmospheric water vapor system” (Matuszko and Weglarczyk). Water Vapor’s concentration is minded as a result of global warming because it is closely related to the atmosphere and viewed as a product of industrialization (NOAA). Earth’s average surface temperature is fourteen degrees, fifty-seven point two Fahrenheit or two hundred and eighty-seven degrees’ kelvin but the earth’s temperature can be much higher or lower than the average. Carbon dioxide is also considered a pollutant and pollutant exposure is currently associated with higher risk of cancer, diabetes and adverse effects on the immunological and reproductive systems (EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency), and Hays and Aylward, 2003). In conclusion there is an blatant correlation between global warming and climate change, and climate change has a heavy impact on weather.

A lot of global warming effects domino off of each other; global warming causes climate change. The climate change in the artic regions is warmer than the region is accustomed to, causing the ice caps to melt. Since 1979, Arctic sea ice in September has been declining at a rate of about 13% per decade. the contraction of the Arctic ice cap is accelerating global warming. Snow and ice usually form a protective, cooling layer over the Arctic. When that covering melts, the earth absorbs more sunlight and gets hotter. And the latest scientific data confirm the far-reaching effects of climbing global temperatures. “Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world” (NRDC). The melting of the ice caps or bergs would displace animals like penguins and panda bears. Ice bergs are their habitat, so to lose that makes them more vulnerable than ever. Polar bears are considered a threatened species an estimated 20,000-25,000 polar bears remain worldwide. “If sea ice continues to melt at its current rate, two-thirds of the world's 20,000-25,000 polar bears could disappear by 2050” (Dybas). Penguin’s who call the artic home are on the fast track to becoming extinct as well. The emperor penguin will march toward drastic decline if the brakes are not put on climate change, one population of penguins has been halved in the last fifty years. "This is

happening before our very eyes because of the fossil fuel pollution we're pumping into the air," said World Wide Fund for Nature Canada's Julia Langer. Biologists are worried that if the sea ice melts earlier on in the year, shallow-water ecosystems will soak up more sunlight and algae will spread across the sea floor, changing the habitat of the sea floor. Seaweed is an organism that would flourish if the ice bergs completely melted and sunlight infiltrated the waters, seaweed would smother the pictured tunicate.

As climate change had a ripple effect to melting ice bergs, as does melting ice bergs to rising sea levels. Melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets also contribute to rising sea levels, threatening low-lying areas around the globe with beach erosion, coastal flooding, and contamination of freshwater supplies. Rising seas would severely impact the United States. Scientists project as much as a 3-foot sea-level rise by 2100. According to a 2001 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study, this increase would inundate some 22,400 square miles of land along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, primarily in Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina. In southern Louisiana coasts are literally sinking by about three feet (a meter) a century, a process called subsidence. Rising sea level produces a cascade of effects. And along Arctic coastlines, entire villages will be uprooted because they're in danger of being swamped. The native people of the Arctic view global warming as a threat to their cultural identity and their very survival. There are two areas where people have had to move from their home because of the rising sea level.

Ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's oceans, caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater, the water becomes more acidic and the ocean’s pH (a measure of how acidic or basic the ocean is) drops. Even though the ocean is immense, enough carbon dioxide can have a major impact. In the past 200 years alone, ocean water has become 30 percent more acidic—faster than any known change in ocean chemistry in the last 50 million years. An estimated 30–40% of the carbon dioxide from human activity released into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes. Initially, many scientists focused on the benefits of the ocean removing this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.  However, decades of ocean observations now show that there is also a downside — the CO2 absorbed by the ocean is changing the chemistry of the seawater. Rising CO2 emissions are lowering the pH of the world’s ocean resulting in changes to the seawater carbonate system, termed ‘ocean

acidification’. Which could cause wide-ranging effects to marine ecosystems, by affecting individual organisms at all trophic levels. An example of ocean acidification’s effects is an experiment that was ran on a pteropod or sea butterfly. They placed the shell of the sea butterfly in ocean water with the projected pH level for the year 2100 and after a month and a half the shell had all but dissolved. Low pH levels are also play a factor in oyster reproductive failure and contributes to seasonal under saturation.

In conclusion I think that global warming’s impact on aquatic life has more cons than pros and because of this I call on the human race to take action. With statistics like ice berg’s probability of melting under normal conditions would equal that over the last 19 years was less than 2%, they said, and the likelihood that it would equal that over the last 46 years was under 0.1%.

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