Beach Chair Scientist

Ahh, you see the polar ice sheets and glaciers are melting, but the water still needs to go somewhere – the ocean. The water then rises transforming geography, manipulates the balance of salt in estuaries and creates higher flooding intensity.

Basically,  rising sea levels affects coastal areas the most drastically.  But, don’t dismay! The EPA, in cooperation with NOAA and a few other exciting agencies recently released a report – Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region – in which many many recommendations are made to coastal towns to plan and adapt for rising sea levels.

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WOW! I wish I had the answer to that one…And, also, that reminds me of why I tend to answer the scientific based questions first. However, I do like a challenge and a reason to search for up-to-date information. I found these two articles on a subscription site that provide some insight to the question…

OCEANS: Warming oceans driving fish toward poles — study (02/13/2009)

Climate change could push more than 1,000 species of commercial fish and shellfish away from tropical waters and toward polar oceans, according to a new study.

By studying projected ocean changes, researchers predicted that by 2050, marine species will migrate toward cooler waters at an average rate of between 40 kilometers and 45 kilometers (25 miles and 28 miles) per decade.

“These are major impacts that we are going to see within our lifetime and our children’s lifetime,” said William Cheung, a marine biologist at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and lead author of the study, which is to be published this week in the journal Fish and Fisheries. “Climate change provides us with a kick in the pants. We can’t think about climate change and biodiversity without thinking about the impact it will have on people.”

The migrations could cause massive food shortages and make fish move away from developing equatorial countries where millions depend on them as their primary source of protein (Azadeh Ansari, CNN.com, Feb. 12).

Global warming disrupting whale migrations — scientists

Gray whales along the West Coast are lingering longer in the north before making their swim to tropical waters for the summer, scientists and whale watchers say.

Every year, grays make a 12,000-mile round-trip migration from warm waters off Baja California to Arctic seas between Alaska and Russia, where they gorge themselves on enough crustaceans to keep them nourished for the rest of the year.

But as the Arctic seas warm because of climate change, competition from new species may be forcing whales to spend more time gathering nourishment and delaying their return to the tropics by an average of 10 days per year, according to Wayne Perryman, a researcher at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif., where scientists have watched whales for 20 years.

Perryman said the change was significant but did not know how the whales’ new schedule would affect the population over time. “The Arctic environment is so darn dynamic,” he said. “We just don’t know how this will play out” (Michael Torrice, Miami Herald, Feb. 12). – PR

Stories compiled from Greenwire

Do you have another great question? Check out www.beachchairscientist.com and let us know what you always ponder while digging your toes in the sand!