Reefs at Risk
Marine species is less commonly appreciated. If the nutrient-poor open oceans of the world have been compared to lifeless deserts, reefs—which grow beneath just one-tenth of 1 percent of the ocean’s surface—are more often compared to rainforests. That’s not only because of the biodiversity they host, but because of their important role in “primary production”: the utilization of chemical or light energy in the conversion of inorganic into organic matter that forms the base of the food chain. “Primary productivity in an acre of coral reef is actually greater than in an acre of tropical rainforest,” says professor of biology Robert Woollacott, curator of marine invertebrates in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. The nutrient-rich waters surrounding coral reefs support a large population of fish that are captured for the global trade that stocks both restaurants and aquaria worldwide, and also represents an important food source for marine predators and birds.The fact that reefs every-where are threatened, therefore, is more than just a sad footnote to the ecological changes that are taking place on land. When a reef goes, it takes a key part of the global marine ecosystem with it.
Photographer David Arnold ’71, who in 2005 documented melting glaciers (see “ A Melting World ,” May-June 2006, page 36), has now embarked on a project to document the decline of shallow-water coral reefs. Working with some of the pioneers of underwater landscape photography, Arnold this year visited the same places they had photographed years before. The earliest images reproduced here were made in 1970 by freelance photographer Jerry Greenberg (who appears in the Carysfort Reef photograph taken in 2010 [see second photo in the image gallery]); the most recent of the “before” photographs in this series from Key Largo and the Caribbean were made in 2004, just seven years ago.
Unlike glaciers, which melt or freeze according to the temperature, coral reefs are not simple. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” says Arnold. Threats can be local or global, and are at least in part the direct or indirect result of human activity. Ocean warming, high-intensity storms, sedimentation, nutrient runoff, and overfishing can all destroy a reef.
Coral grows in the presence of a captive photosynthetic organism called a dinoflagellate; its pigments give the coral some of its color, and it provides the coral with sugars that enable it to grow. If that relationship breaks apart—in response to heat stress induced by a change in sea-surface temperature, for example—the coral is said to bleach; it will die and break apart if not repopulated by another dinoflagellate.
Sea Surface Temp - News
With no mitigation, total temperature-related deaths may reach 5878 by 2100 compared to 1747 in a world with no human-induced climate change. Coral bleaching – Rising sea surface temperatures could result in more frequent and widespread coral bleaching
If that relationship breaks apart—in response to heat stress induced by a change in sea-surface temperature, for example—the coral is said to bleach; it will die and break apart if not repopulated by another dinoflagellate.
Sea surface temperatures vary over the course of decades through a climate pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, during which small changes in depth occur for existing low-oxygen regions, Deutsch said. Low-oxygen regions that rise to warmer,
Scientists have observed increases in continental temperatures and increases in the temperature of the lower atmosphere. In the oceans, we have seen increases in sea-surface temperatures as well as increases in deep-ocean heat content.
“The sea surface temperature and other meteorological parameters indicate that expected tropical cyclone may further intensify on Saturday/Sunday,” said an advisory issued by the department`s tropical cyclone warning centre on Thursday.
THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New paper shows much higher sea surface ...
A paper published online yesterday in the journal Paleoceanography shows Nordic sea surface temperatures were as much as 6C higher than the present during the Holocene Climate Optimum (~ 9500 to 6000 years ago) and a "general cooling trend" over the past 7000 years. The paper finds changes in solar energy impacting the Earth (solar insolation) explain the natural cycles of cooling and warming seen in the proxy reconstruction. The study results clearly show no correlation with CO2 levels and once again demonstrate how the Sun controls climate, not CO2. A high-resolution sediment core from the Vøring Plateau has been studied to document the centennial to millennial variability of the surface water conditions during the Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) and the late Holocene period (LHP) in order to evaluate the effects of solar insolation on surface ocean climatology. Quantitative August summer sea surface temperatures (SSSTs) with a time resolution of 2–40 years are reconstructed by using three different diatom transfer function methods. Spectral- and scale-space methods are applied to the records to explore the variability present in the time series at different time scales. The SSST development in core MD95-2011 shows a delayed response to Northern Hemisphere maximum summer insolation at ∼11,000 years B.P. The record shows the maximum SSST of the HCO to be from 7.3 to 8.9 kyr B.P., which implies that the site was located in the regional warm water pool removed from the oceanic fronts and Arctic waters. Superimposed on the general cooling trend are higher-frequency variabilities at time scales of 80–120, 210–320, 320–640, and 640–1280 years. The climate variations at the time scale of 320–640 years are documented both for periods of high and low solar orbital insolation. We found evidence that the submillennial-scale mode of variability (640–900 years) in SSST evident during the LHP is directly associated with varying solar forcing. At the shorter scale of 260–450 years, the SSST during the LHP displays a lagged response to solar forcing with a phase-locked behavior indicating the existence of a feedback mechanism in the climate system triggered by variations in the solar constant as well as the role of the thermal inertia of the ocean. The abruptness of the cooling events in the LHP, especially pronounced during the onsets of the Holocene Cold Period I (approximately 2300 years B.P.
I do remember talk of TC intensity linked to local sea surface temp. Afaik, the Atlantic is easier to model than the Pacific
ROSSBOWHUNTER: Sea Surface Temp Sites Sea Surface Temp - Bookshelf
Comparative sea-surface temperature measurements
COMPARATIVE SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS Richard W. James and Paul T. Fox 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Sea surface temperature observations Under the ...Satellite Technology, Principles and Applications
Original images are available on the companion website at www.wiley.com/go/maini 10.10.6 Measurement of Sea Surface Temperature The surface temperature of ...Interhemispheric water exchange in the Atlantic Ocean
The sea height and sea surface temperature data, their processing and preliminary results on equatorial propagating signals at the equatorial Atlantic are ...Ionian Sea Surface Temperature, Satellite and Drifter Observations, May to October 1995
Understanding the Oceans from Space, The Unique Applications of Satellite Oceanography
2.4.3 Thermal infrared radiometry for measuring sea surface temperature Whereas visible waveband radiometers rely on reflected sunlight and can operate only ...Casual Walkthroughs Directory
HotSpots Charts, LLC Saltwater Fishing Charts & FREE Sea ...
HotSpots Charts, LLC Saltwater Fishing Charts & FREE Sea Surface Temperature Charts
Sea surface temperature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sea surface temperature (SST) is the water temperature close to the oceans surface. ... Warm sea surface temperatures are known to be a cause of tropical cyclogenesis over the ...
Sea Surface Temperature - IMCS Coastal Ocean Observation Lab
Attention Google Earth users: Sea Surface Temperature .kmz files for selected ... A few notes on the Sea Surface Temperature Image Archive. The images in this database are ...
Sea surface temperature: Information from Answers.com
Sea-Surface Temperature The temperature of the surface layer of sea or oceanic water. The SST is an important factor in many teleconnections and is
Sea Surface Temperature - IMCS Coastal Ocean Observation Lab
Attention Google Earth users: Sea Surface Temperature .kmz files for selected regions are now available here. Learn more about Google Earth at ...