Climate change is transforming coastal pelagic and benthic ecosystems in the Eastern Pacific, altering primary productivity and propagating up the food web at rates. This study estimates the effects of two modes of variability in the National Pacific Current (NPC) on the productivity of 163 pink, chum, and sockeye salmon stocks. Rising ocean temperatures have led to increased spatial and temporal extent of coastal habitat loss, declining productivity of demersal fish and invertebrates, and loss of coastal habitats for Pacific people.
The tropical Pacific accounts for about 20% of all primary ocean productivity, and both El Niño and La Niña events affect climate and weather worldwide with hurricanes, droughts, and warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific. The life-histories of exploited fish species, such as Pacific salmon, are vulnerable to anthropogenic stressors including climate change, selective exploitation, and El Nino.
El Nino years cause low productivity in the Gulf of California, leading to reduced fisheries productivity. Warm ocean temperatures in the western Pacific contribute to increased rainfall around Indonesia and New Guinea islands. Ocean warming also contributes to the O2-depletion of ocean dead zones in coastal and open ocean areas, rendering them largely uninhabitable by marine life.
Maintaining primary productivity plays a key role in producing oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. With climate change, marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent, intense, and persistent, even with cooler waters. Currents play a huge role in marine productivity through upwelling, and overfishing remains the greatest threat to this fishery.
📹 Will the ocean ever run out of fish? – Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Jennifer Jacquet
When most people think of fishing, we imagine relaxing in a boat and patiently reeling in the day’s catch. But modern industrial …
What are the 5 effects of El Niño?
El Niño, a weather phenomenon causing extreme weather events worldwide, can lead to devastating consequences, including droughts, wildfires, heatwaves, deadly flooding, and tropical storms. The economic impact of El Niño is estimated to be as high as $3. 4 trillion. The COVID-19 pandemic and climate change have already led to a global food crisis, making children more vulnerable to El Niño’s effects. They are more likely to face hunger, malnutrition, or contract deadly diseases when they lack nutritious food, safe water, sanitation facilities, or healthcare.
What is the relationship between El Niño events and productivity in the Pacific Ocean?
El Niño occurs when warm surface waters deepen the thermocline, a layer of ocean depth that separates warm surface water from colder water. This thick layer prevents normal upwelling, causing the euphotic zone of the eastern Pacific to lose its productive coastal ecosystem. El Niño also leads to widespread climate changes, with increased precipitation and coastal flooding in Ecuador and northern Peru. These events can destroy homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses, limit transportation, and destroy crops.
El Niño also brings droughts to Indonesia and Australia, threatening water supplies and agriculture, which depends on water for irrigation. Overall, El Niño has a devastating impact on the eastern Pacific’s coastal ecosystem and economy.
What are some of the consequences of the weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño?
El Niño and La Niña are two climate events that impact the Pacific Ocean. El Niño causes the Pacific jet stream to move south and east, leading to wetter conditions in the Southern U. S. and warmer and drier conditions in the North. It also has a significant impact on marine life off the Pacific coast, as upwelling weakens or stops during El Niño, reducing phytoplankton off the coast, affecting fish and other fish-eating species.
La Niña, also known as El Viejo or “a cold event”, has the opposite effect. During La Niña events, trade winds are stronger than usual, pushing more warm water toward Asia. Upwelling increases off the west coast of the Americas, bringing cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. These cold waters push the jet stream northward, causing drought in the southern U. S., heavy rains and flooding in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. During a La Niña year, winter temperatures are warmer in the South and cooler in the North, and La Niña can also lead to a more severe hurricane season.
How is climate change affecting the productivity of the ocean?
Climate change is affecting various aspects of our mission, including fisheries management, aquaculture, and conservation of protected resources and habitats. NOAA provides climate services to federal agencies, states, tribes, communities, and businesses across America, providing best-in-class data and information to help people develop science-based climate change solutions. NOAA helps people recover quickly from extreme weather events and climate changes by promoting sustainable fisheries, restoring coastal ecosystems, and providing ecological and economic benefits.
Their Climate Science Strategy, Regional Climate Action Plans, and Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management Road Map help scientists, fishermen, managers, and coastal businesses understand the changing state of marine resources and the actions needed to safeguard them. They are committed to using the best available science to inform management decisions and support climate change solutions.
What are the effects of La Niña on the eastern Pacific Ocean?
During La Niña, surface trade winds blow more strongly than normal, causing warm surface water in the western Pacific to accumulate and cool water in the eastern Pacific. This results in
increased buoyancy and rainfall, while less buoyant air favors subsidence and less rainfall. These stronger-than-normal winds reinforce ocean temperature anomalies by pushing water away from the eastern Pacific to the western Pacific Ocean, allowing deeper colder water to upwell and cool the surface.
These winds also transport surface water heated by the sun to the western Pacific, resulting in warmer water around Indonesia. This warmer water increases air rise over Indonesia, leading to increased convection and rainfall, while colder surface waters result in diminished convection and rainfall over the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The positive Bjerknes feedback strengthens the initial stronger-than-normal trade winds and east-west contrast in surface temperatures. The feedback begins when trade winds weaken and sea surface temperatures warm in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. This leads to increased rising motion over the central and/or eastern Pacific, more convection and rainfall, and less rainfall and convection over Indonesia and the far western Pacific.
What are the effects of climate change on the Pacific Ocean?
Climate change poses significant threats to many Pacific Island nations, including sea level rise, coral damage, and changing climate circulation patterns. Low-lying islands, such as the Marshall Islands and French Polynesia, are at risk of drowning due to rising sea levels. Rising sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification also threaten corals, which generate sediment for these islands. Additionally, changing climate circulation patterns affect the strength, duration, and paths of storms and precipitation events in the Pacific Ocean, affecting the risk island populations face from extreme storms and the availability of freshwater needed to sustain them.
To estimate the impact of climate on Pacific islands and the world at large, researchers at MIT have constructed global models of atmospheric and ocean circulation that simulate important climate patterns observed today. These models can also simulate future climate scenarios and forecast potential patterns in atmospheric and ocean processes, such as trade winds, pressure gradients, and storms. However, these models have low spatial resolution, so they are used as input for smaller but finer-scaled models or statistical methods called downscaling.
This downscaling approach yields predictions of the direct effects of climate change on a particular locale, such as how waves affecting an island’s coastline will change, whether the island will experience flooding and erosion, or if it will naturally keep up with sea level rise. The research aims to help governments and planners prepare for the future and protect their constituents and populations at large.
What changes occur in the Pacific Ocean during an El Niño?
During El Niño and La Niña, the tropical Pacific experiences weaker surface winds, warmer ocean temperatures, and below-average rainfall over Indonesia and above-average rainfall over the central or eastern Pacific. Rising air motion increases over the central or eastern Pacific, leading to lower surface pressure and higher surface pressure. An increase in sinking air motion over Indonesia results in higher surface pressure and dryness.
The Generalized Walker Circulation anomaly during El Niño events shifts a rising branch of the Walker Circulation east of 180°, while sinking branches shift to the Maritime continent and northern South America.
How does El Niño affect the marine life of the Pacific coast?
El Niño, a natural phenomenon, reduces the upwelling of cold ocean water off the coast of the Americas, leading to fish death or migration to areas with more food. This also affects sea birds and kelp forests, which are often destroyed by storms and ocean swells. Fish populations off California may also be reduced, and marine mammals like seals and sea lions that feed on fish may be affected. Californians may see an increase in dead and live strandings of seals and sea lions along the coast, and poor pup survival at island breeding sites.
However, scientists report a long-term growth rate of 6 to 10 percent for California sea lions and harbor seals. El Niño also affects ocean fishing, with warmer than normal ocean temperatures causing fishes like yellowfin tuna and dorado to be more common off southern California. However, bait, such as anchovy and squid, may travel to the north, and some game fish, like white seabass and California halibut, may follow them.
What happens in the Pacific Ocean during an El Niño?
El Niño occurs when the surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean become warmer than usual, influenced by the atmosphere and winds blowing over the Pacific. Easterly trade winds, which are typically strong high-pressure systems, weaken, causing a redistribution of ocean heat. This allows warm water to slosh from the western Pacific towards the Americas and reduces the upwelling of cooler, nutrient-rich waters from the deep.
The circulation of the air above the tropical Pacific Ocean also responds, with typically strong high-pressure systems weakening and Pacific westerlies bringing in bursts of warmer, moister air. The Walker circulation over the equator also changes substantially with the arrival of El Niño.
How does ENSO affect marine life?
ENSO impacts salmon in the northeast Pacific Ocean by altering the quality and quantity of cold-water habitats and aquatic food-webs. More snowmelt and rain-fed runoff improve freshwater habitats, while less decreases them. El Niño favors a warmer and drier winter in the Pacific Northwest, causing degradation in freshwater habitats. However, El Niño winters bring milder, wetter winters with more snowmelt and rain-fed runoff to coastal Alaska, which is beneficial for Alaska’s salmon.
La Niña intensifies atmospheric circulation in the tropical Pacific, shifting the jet stream’s location northward over the contiguous United States, resulting in drier and warmer southern tiers. Overall, ENSO’s effects on salmon in the northeast Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Northwest are complex and influenced by various factors.
What happens to the water in the Pacific Ocean during El Niño?
El Niño occurs when weak trade winds reduce the amount of cold water coming to the surface, causing warm waters in the west Pacific Ocean to slouch to the east. This leads to warmer air temperatures in the Pacific and subsequently, global air temperatures. This process shuffles heat from one place to another without affecting the Earth’s overall energy budget. Unlike volcanic eruptions or solar minimums, ENSO phases do not create or remove energy from the climate system.
La Niña hides some of Earth’s existing heat below the surface, while El Niño reveals it. Climate scientists call this re-shuffling internal climate variability. The impact of El Niño on a town, state, or region this winter depends on factors such as location, strength of the event, and other climate patterns that influence seasonal outcomes.
📹 How Climate Change Affects Ocean Life | Compilation
We can see the effects of the climate crisis in many different ways here on land. But the oceans are also part of the interconnected, …
Unfortunately, we are now in 2021 and nothing has changed things have actually got even worse. Humans are greedy so they will continue to overfish no matter what. 700 – 800 million people depend on fishing as a source of income and unfortunately it all about money, but the majority lot of humans don’t seem to realise the dangerous impact this will cause when all marine life will be extinct. Already there is a rise of carbon levels in our oceans due to overfishing and this is only the start things will get even worse in the next 20 years. Fish will never be safe in the oceans as long as humans are around and that is the sad reality of it.
habitat destruction like bottom trawling is a much greater threat to our standard of living than global warming or likely even global war in the long run. humans wont die in mass if we kill all the costal water habitat, but the life we will be left with will be much poorer. the solutions are to be found in private property and people being held to account for the loss of value in someone else’s property – including that property’s ability to sustain life.
Not even oceans. I fish in Alberta and I’m only 24 years old. In my lifetime the number of invasive species, algae blooms and fish diseases that have become prominent in my area are massive. Not to mention longer winters are causing winter kills because of the lack of oxygen and in the summers the cold water fish aren’t doing as well like grayling and trout.
I would love to see a article on this! There is a Bill they are trying to pass in the US right now that not only affects the pet trade, but could have an effect on ecosystems too. It’s called the Lacey act and it will prevent people from bringing whatever one person arbitrairily decides is “injurious” across state lines. Animals can cross state lines on their own. This means that this Bill, if made a law, won’t stop invasive species as they come from other countries, not just across the US. What it will do, however, is stop people from being able to get specialized vet care if the vet they see now happens to be on the other side of a state line, despite it only being 5 minutes away. It will prevent animal reserves and preserves from getting the animals that need their help. It will prevent people who are trying to get species off the endangered list, onto the extinct list. It could make the people who milk venomous animals lose access to said animals, and well there goes the antivenom(in)! And mostly, if a person moves, they take their pets with them. If a person moves and can’t take their pets with them they do one of two things: The responsible and educated find the pet a new and good home. The opposite let them go free, and therin comes a componant of the massive problem that is invasive species. These things affect not only the US but the world. We want programs that deal with endangered species and working to bounce back numbers on indangered populations. We need as many people willing to produce antivwnom(in) as we can possibly get.
I have a request I’m pregnant turns out that does alot of crazy things to a body can we get a article on the crazy things your body does Like how does your body change the size of your aerials during pregnancy? Why/how does your body replenish/regrow the mucus plug? What causes restless leg problems in pregnant women? What causes some women to vomit through out pregnancy? What causes gestational diabetes? Why is eating leftovers/deli meats/raw meats so bad (what exactly is salmonella and how does it effect the fetus)?
Taking sponsors from wren only perpetuates the idea that all global trash and carbon output is blamed on the individuals rather than the corporations that refuse to adapt to a more conscious market. We simply do not have the time, budget, or ability to live a completely emission free lifestyle because these companies save money by not having to clean up after themselves and use unsafe and carbon boasting practices instead of safer options because anything healthier would simply cost too much for their margins. These companies don’t even let that added money trickle down far enough for the lowest workers to live a carbon free life, all it does is line the pockets of the CEOs. Year after year companies like exon and Bp are polluting water ways, trading eachother the same 3 carbon offset plots of land, and kill thousands of people a year with air pollution when nuclear wind and water have not even a fraction of the deaths or risks. By you taking this sponsor you are spitting in the faces of your followers that you took the years to educate on these issues, apparently we put grew you if many of us have to post comments like these under every bit of profit you want to turn over for going against the education you used to care about. The money is not worth it, you are lining another companies pockets more than your own by letting these people think this service is made in any good faith. Please screw your heads back on and get back to what you’re good at even if you’re not being paid just as much as these pro carbon shilling efforts give you.
Climate issues, on top of over fishing that is collapsing fisheries; plastic pollution; fish farms with ;pathogenic implications to native species; thousands of synthesized chemicals; nuclear waste dumped into the oceans; factory farms and agricultural runoff due to industrial agriculture, causing dead zones from all the high nutrient loads and leaky oil production platforms. All add to the problems with our ocean’s ecosystem. But the core issue is a largely unresponsive, irresponsible, myopic, self- indulgent species, that if it really cared would establish and enforce meaningful environmental laws with demonstrable lasting benefit.
Let’s put solar panels on every home, business and covered parking rooftop and switch to electric vehicles making nearly everything we do solar powered while completely decentralizing our power supply and empowering everyone as power generation owners. Solar power is CHEAPER and electric vehicles are soon to be CHEAPER to make and already are considerably CHEAPER to maintain and operate, especially if charged from your own solar power. A 3-5 year ROI (return on investment) for a solar array that will generate power for decades is a no-brainer and the panels can even be made locally too. #EndFossilFuels #SwitchToSolar #SwitchToElectric #GreenNewDeal #EmpowerEveryone #DEMEXIT #StillSandersPlatform
When scientists say that this is the worst XXX in history, you have to keep in mind that human history only goes back a few hundred years, whereas the animals have been there for millions of years. I’m not sure this is such a big deal for them. They have endured more catastrophic events in the past and will certainly endure them in the future (long after us silly humans have gone extinct).
If you have the space and the climate- grow your own food, instead of a big lawn- you have fruits, vegetables, herbs, medicinal plants, flowers, etc. You save money by producing your own food and you can minimize the impact of transporting and storing the food, plus it’s way more satisfying than mowing and fertilizing a do-nothing patch of grass.
I love seaweed! I like those dried sheets they sell everywhere in Hawaii. I saw a article where sea urchin divers were leaving thousands upon thousands of the unwanted purple varieties to overrun the kelp beds, starving the preferred red variety. They should be hired to haul all those destructive urchins to shore to be destroyed. Duh! So simple, but hey, when have we ever seen man do the simply easy good thing?
i’d really love to see more of the climate discussion shift to these active methods of trapping carbon and installing new agricultural practices over the old arguments of “use less fossil fuels” because at a certain point, just cutting emissions isn’t going to save the planet anymore and it’s urgently important not to give up on trying
I’m curious with warmer global temperatures on land and in the ocean how much additional life will be possible with all the new northern hemisphere areas unlocked from permafrost and freezing ocean temperatures? We know the earth has been far warmer than it is currently multiple times in history so this won’t be the first time. How much fertile soil will be unlocked? Also who decided what Earth’s appropriate average temperature is or should be? How do we know our current temperature isn’t actually a few degrees cooler than what the Earth’s average temperature is over its entire history? There’s been multiple times in the past that the Earth didn’t have any polar ice caps, so how do we know if we currently have just the right amount or more than the average amount historically speaking?