Transition Island Blog

Global warming is disrupting wildlife and the environment on every continent.

According to an unprecedented study published in the high-credibility journal Nature, climate change is already affecting the world’s ecosystems to a large extent.

This comes from a team of experts, including members of the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) from America, Europe, Australia and China, and is based on published reports dating back to 1970.

human doings

At least 90% of environmental damage and disruption around the world could be explained by rising temperatures driven by human activity.

Big falls in Antarctic penguin populations, fewer fish in African lakes, shifts in American river flows and earlier flowering and bird migrations in Europe are all likely to be driven by global warming, the study found.

In one study rising temperatures caused sea ice in Antarctica to vanish, prompting an 85% fall in the krill population. A separate study found that the population of Emperor penguins, which feed on krill in the same region, had also fallen by 50% during one warm winter.

A loss of krill, also a dietary staple for whales and seals, was cited as a factor in recent accounts of cannibalism among polar bears in the Arctic. Read more…

CO2 worsening

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to the latest figures, renewing fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control.

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also confirms that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected.

less reabsorption

Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tonnes of CO2 each year. Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be reabsorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than is currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

Martin Parry, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s working group on impacts, said: “Despite all the talk, the situation is getting worse. Levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise in the atmosphere and the rate of that rise is accelerating. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and the scale of those impacts will also accelerate, until we decide to do something about it.” Read more…

Meanwhile…

New research suggests the narwhal, the mysterious whale with a long spiral tusk, may be more at risk from climatic change. Researchers fear that the ‘unicorn of the sea’ is so attuned to its environment - so narrow in its range of habitat and specific in diet - that it may be one of the least able of Arctic mammals to adapt to rapid warming in the high north.

They take very few species of prey. Unlike other artic whales, they won’t just eat anything that comes along. They feed primarily in the cold and darkness of winter, diving down over 1,500 metres (5,000ft) in search of its favourite prey - the Greenland halibut - with a second-order preference for cod and squid.

Unlike the polar bear, which is widely distributed around the polar region, the narwhal population is concentrated in a relatively small area between Baffin Island and Greenland. With a small population of no more than 80,000 individuals, any change in the distribution of heavy winter pack ice is likely to adversely affect the species. Read more…

Opinion:
Narwhals are true Arctic specialists. While polar bears are fluffy and white, Narwhals are more threatened, especially as the USA has finally agreed that polar bears ARE threatened by artic environment changes due to climate change. Read more…

We need to do more for threatened species - for our own sakes as much as theirs!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Eco-News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.