Ocean Health
Page 3
Sea Levels Rising Faster than Ever
“Sea levels in the 20th century rose faster than at any time in the last 3,000 years. And in the 21st century, the tides will climb ever higher—by at least 28 cms (11 inches) and possibly by as much as 130 cms (51 inches), according to two new studies.
Human activity is implicated in both studies and although neither delivers a new conclusion, each represents a new approach to studies of sea level rise as a consequence of climate change and each is a confirmation of previous research.”
The Future Sea Level Rise
“World leaders have begun to get serious about fighting climate change, but we still face the incredible risk of a rising sea in this century and far into the future. According to Climate Central, a research organization, a 4-degree Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) global temperature increase, which is our current path, could result in sea level rise that would submerge land where 470 – 760 million people now live.
If the world’s governments actually meet the declared goal of the UN climate summit in Paris and reduce and draw down carbon emissions, keeping the world to a 2 Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature increase, 130 million would need to evacuate over coming decades. To understand how serious this could be, here’s some perspective: 4 million Syrians have fled their homeland since their civil war began in 2011, with 380,000 making their way to Europe this year. Imagine millions more on the move each year, all over the world, and the political, social, and environmental effects of this migration.”
Oceans will soon contain more plastic than fish
“‘The best research currently available estimates that there are over 150 million tonnes (165 million tons) of plastics in the ocean today,’ [a] report reads. ‘In a business-as-usual scenario, the ocean is expected to contain 1 tonne (1.1 tons) of plastic for every 3 tonnes of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish (by weight).’
In other words, in just 34 years, plastic trash in the ocean will outweigh all the fish in the sea.”
There is More Plastic in Our Oceans Than We Thought
The 5 Gyres Institute co-authored this study which is the most comprehensive estimate of small plastics in the world’s oceans. There were two other papers published earlier, one by Cozar (2014) and Eriksen (2014) using separate data sets.
The paper published last week in Environmental Research Letters, A Global Inventory of Small Floating Plastic Debris, uses three ocean models and every dataset published since the 1970s. With 10 authors contributing to it, it’s the best so far. This new study suggests there are 15 to 51 trillion microplastic particles in the world’s oceans, weighing somewhere between 93 and 236,000 metric tons. This is roughly seven times more than what we thought before.
