January 16, 2019 — Ocean temperatures in 2018 were the highest ever recorded, according to figures released Wednesday by a group of international scientists.
Last year’s levels surpassed the previous record, set in 2017. Record-keeping began in 1958.
According to the new figures, published in the scientific journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, the 2018 temperatures mean the last five years were the warmest on record.
Read the full story at The Hill
January 14, 2019 — Scientists say the world’s oceans are warming far more quickly than previously thought, a finding with dire implications for climate change because almost all the excess heat absorbed by the planet ends up stored in their waters.
A new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that the oceans are heating up 40 percent faster on average than a United Nations panel estimated five years ago. The researchers also concluded that ocean temperatures have broken records for several straight years.
“2018 is going to be the warmest year on record for the Earth’s oceans,” said Zeke Hausfather, an energy systems analyst at the independent climate research group Berkeley Earth and an author of the study. “As 2017 was the warmest year, and 2016 was the warmest year.”
As the planet has warmed, the oceans have provided a critical buffer. They have slowed the effects of climate change by absorbing 93 percent of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases humans pump into the atmosphere.
“If the ocean wasn’t absorbing as much heat, the surface of the land would heat up much faster than it is right now,” said Malin L. Pinsky, an associate professor in the department of ecology, evolution and natural resources at Rutgers University. “In fact, the ocean is saving us from massive warming right now.”
January 9, 2019 — For the first time in a decade, the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay declined, dropping from a C- to a D+ in an annual State of the Bay report issued Monday.
Culprits in the decline include increased runoff from rainstorms in 2018 that were rendered more intense by a changing climate and continued failure in some jurisdictions to curb nutrient and sediment loads.
This is especially true in Pennsylvania, which consistently fails to meet most of its bay cleanup commitments, and where the chronically polluted Susquehanna River delivers half the bay’s freshwater.
“Simply put, the bay suffered a massive assault in 2018,” Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told reporters. “The bay’s sustained improvement was reversed in 2018, exposing just how fragile the recovery is.”
Adding to the assault, Baker said, are plans by the Trump administration to roll back clean water and clean air regulations that will directly impact the watershed.
Trump plans to overturn an Obama-era rule and reduce federal oversight for vast sections of the nation’s waterways and wetlands, and also ease federal restrictions for coal-fired power plant emissions. About a third of the nitrogen that reaches the bay comes from airborne sources, said Baker, some from as far away as the Midwest.
January 7, 2019 — As climate change and immigration lead priorities for the new House Democratic majority, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva may just be the man for the moment.
The question however is: Did Grijalva find this moment or did the moment finally find him?
“It took time,” the Arizona Democrat said. “I think people have come to the conclusion that one has to look beyond the obvious and understand that [on] environmental issues, particular to climate change, we’re all in the same boat.”
The 70-year-old son of a Mexican immigrant, Grijalva is the new chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. With it comes a platform to focus public attention, and legislation, on public lands and environmental issues with a progressive bent and a consideration of racial justice.
His committee’s first major hearing will be on the effect of climate change on public lands, Grijalva said. He also expects to hold hearings on the environmental complications of President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall and has staked out a big policy fight by vowing to try to reauthorize the nation’s fishery laws, where climate change impacts will be an issue.
Republicans on the often-contentious committee likely will oppose many of Grijalva’s initiatives, and a Republican Senate majority, not to mention Trump, will stand in the way.
January 7, 2019 — Climate change is expected to hit the Northeast pretty hard, affecting crops, ski resorts and fisheries on the coast. Here are some of our latest New England reports on climate change — from inland floods in New Hampshire, to a Connecticut forest, to a salt marsh north of Boston where there’s an invasive plant that just won’t quit.
The federal government recently released a lengthy climate assessment with a chapter focused on the Northeast. Our friends at WBUR put together a few New England takeaways you should know.
First, climate change is affecting our health, bringing warmer temperatures that are actually rising faster in the Northeast than elsewhere in the continental U.S. That can mean more deaths from extreme heat, plus more troubles with ticks, asthma and allergies.
Warmer seasons will spell some trouble for some businesses — from fruit farmers to ski resorts. On the flip side, the changes could be a boon to some growers, and they’ll see a longer growing season.
And the report says fisheries will be affected by climate change, as Northeast ocean temperatures are rising 3 times faster than the global average. That means there will be fewer of some species, like northern shrimp, surf clams and Atlantic cod. Other species will increase, like black sea bass.
January 4, 2019 — Before deciding whether to see Lobster War: The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds at Woodstock Town Hall Theatre next week, Upper Valley cinephiles need to distinguish David Abel’s new documentary from Lobster Wars, plural.
While Lobster Wars, a six-part reality TV series that ran on the Discovery Channel in 2007, followed fishermen from the United Kingdom pursuing crustaceans over Georges Bank, the feature Lobster War (singular) focuses on American and Canadian lobstermen pursuing the creatures around an island off Maine’s Down East that both countries claim.
Abel is screening Lobster War, which does not yet have a distributor, at venues around New England. The veteran print journalist’s current tour, which follows a round of film-festival appearances, is scheduled to begin in the fishing town of Gloucester, Mass., tonight and to make its Vermont premiere in Woodstock on Wednesday.
“My first two docs were on cable, on network distribution deals that hemmed us in except for the odd festival,” Abel, who writes about environmental issues for the Boston Globe, said during a telephone interview on Wednesday. “This is the first time I’ve decided to go the theater route.
“It’s really gratifying to show your work, to meet folks who are really interested in these issues.”
Climate change is the issue at the center of Lobster War, which documents a dispute between fishermen from Maine and Atlantic Canada. Over the last decade, with ocean waters warming off the New England coast, lobsters have been migrating north and east in search of colder waters for breeding, many of them are now clustering in a 277-square-mile patch of ocean described in the movie as a “Gray Zone” around Machias Seal Island.
January 2, 2019 — A stunning shortage of Bering Sea ice in spring and record warmth in autumn marked what scientists say will be one of the warmest years recorded in Alaska, raising questions about everything from the future of commercial fishing to new agricultural opportunities.
Alaska’s most “extreme” 2018 climate event was the lack of Bering Sea ice, growing only to half its previous lowest size, in 2001, said Rick Thoman, a climatologist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
That had consequences in Western Alaska coastal communities, causing winter flooding in villages usually ringed by protective sea ice, and raising risks for people hunting on iffy ice, or by boat instead of snowmachines.
“It is absolutely unprecedented,” said Thoman. “We’ve seen nothing like it” in records extending from modern satellite data back to whalers’ logs in the 1800s.
The limited ice, coupled with high sea surface temperatures and a mildly warm atmosphere, ensured that 2018 will be one of the five warmest years in Alaska history. The state averaged about 30.1 degrees statewide, Thoman said, based on a preliminary estimate.
It will mean the four warmest years in the state have been recorded in the last five years, with 2002 being the only outlier, he said. 2016 was the warmest-ever year for Alaska, at 31.9 degrees, based on records back to 1925.
December 21, 2018 — Sustainability has become a buzzword in the seafood industry in recent years, a prerequisite for doing business in the 21st century.
But with the advent of real effects of climate change being felt in fisheries and aquaculture operations around the world, paying attention to environmental news is no longer shunted off to corporate sustainability officers.
In 2018, even more evidence was presented that increasing water temperatures, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation caused by climate change will result in devastation and disruption in the world’s marine economy. A November report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, compiled by 13 U.S. government agencies, painted a grim picture of the future of both U.S. and global fisheries as the effects of climate change continue to advance.
Beyond economic damages, upheaval in the global marine economy is likely to lead to political upheaval, a study published in the journal Science in August revealed. Climate change is driving fish species to migrate to new areas, with fish and other marine animals shifting toward the poles at an average rate of 70 kilometers per decade. That rate is projected to continue or even accelerate as the planet warms. In the process, they’re crossing political boundaries – potentially setting up future conflicts as some countries lose access to fish and others gain it, according to the report.
December 19, 2018 — The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council has adopted a new ecosystem-based plan to manage Alaska’s Bering Sea, where climate change is affecting coastal communities and commercial fisheries.
The Bering Sea is among the world’s most productive regions for seafood, but warming water temperatures and a lack of sea ice over recent years have forced the NPFMC to consider new approaches to its management of the sea’s fisheries.
The result is the Bering Sea Fisheries Ecosystem Plan(FEP), a 150-page document adopted by the NPFMC this month intended to provide a more agile and inclusive framework for the quickly changing ecosystem.
“One of the things that was very important to the council was making sure that we have the tools in place to be able to respond to changing climate conditions by some of our modules that look at evaluating the resiliency of the management framework and different tools that are available to address the bigger-picture more holistic questions,” said Diana Evans, the council’s primary staff lead for the FEP.
Evans and her colleagues worked for four years to develop the new plan, taking in extensive input from stakeholders and local and traditional communities who live on the coastal Bering Sea – the latter a primary focus of the FEP.
December 19, 2018 — As atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide will be absorbed into the ocean. New research suggests rising CO2 levels in the ocean could disrupt the olfactory abilities of coho salmon.
Salmon rely on their sense of smell to track prey, find mates and navigate their way back upstream to spawn. According to the new study, published this week in the journal Global Change Biology, a compromised sense of smell would pose a serious threat to the health of salmon populations.
Lab experiments showed rising acidity levels caused by elevated CO2 levels inhibits salmon’s already vulnerable sensory-neural system.
“Our studies and research from other groups have shown that exposure to pollutants can also interfere with sense of smell for salmon,” Evan Gallagher, a professor of toxicology at the University of Washington, said in a news release. “Now, salmon are potentially facing a one-two punch from exposure to pollutants and the added burden of rising CO2. These have implications for the long-term survival of our salmon.”