If current rates of carbon emissions continue until 2050, 'the oceans will be more acidic than they have been for tens of millions of years'
BONN (Germany) - CLIMATE change is turning the oceans more acid in a trend that could endanger everything from clams to coral and be irreversible for thousands of years, national science academies said on Monday.
Seventy academies from around the world urged governments meeting in Bonn for climate talks from June 1-12 to take more account of risks to the oceans in a new UN treaty for fighting global warming due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.
The academies said rising amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted mainly by human use of fossil fuels, were being absorbed by the oceans and making it harder for creatures to build protective body parts.
The shift disrupts ocean chemistry and attacks the 'building blocks needed by many marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to produce their skeletons, shells and other hard structures', it said.
On some projections, levels of acidification in 80 per cent of Arctic seas would be corrosive to clams that are vital to the food web by 2060, it said.
And 'coral reefs may be dissolving globally', it said, if atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were to rise to 550 parts per million (ppm) from a current 387 ppm. Corals are home to many species of fish.
The warning was issued by the Inter-Academy Panel, representing science academies of countries from Albania to Zimbabwe and including those of Australia, Britain, France, Japan and the United States.
Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, the British science academy, said there may be an 'underwater catastrophe'.
The academies' statement said that, if current rates of carbon emissions continue until 2050, computer models indicate that 'the oceans will be more acidic than they have been for tens of millions of years'.
It also urged actions to reduce other pressures on the oceans, such as pollution and over-fishing.
source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Tech%2Band%2BScience/Story/STIStory_384300.html
BONN (Germany) - CLIMATE change is turning the oceans more acid in a trend that could endanger everything from clams to coral and be irreversible for thousands of years, national science academies said on Monday.
Seventy academies from around the world urged governments meeting in Bonn for climate talks from June 1-12 to take more account of risks to the oceans in a new UN treaty for fighting global warming due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.
The academies said rising amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted mainly by human use of fossil fuels, were being absorbed by the oceans and making it harder for creatures to build protective body parts.
The shift disrupts ocean chemistry and attacks the 'building blocks needed by many marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to produce their skeletons, shells and other hard structures', it said.
On some projections, levels of acidification in 80 per cent of Arctic seas would be corrosive to clams that are vital to the food web by 2060, it said.
And 'coral reefs may be dissolving globally', it said, if atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were to rise to 550 parts per million (ppm) from a current 387 ppm. Corals are home to many species of fish.
The warning was issued by the Inter-Academy Panel, representing science academies of countries from Albania to Zimbabwe and including those of Australia, Britain, France, Japan and the United States.
Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, the British science academy, said there may be an 'underwater catastrophe'.
The academies' statement said that, if current rates of carbon emissions continue until 2050, computer models indicate that 'the oceans will be more acidic than they have been for tens of millions of years'.
It also urged actions to reduce other pressures on the oceans, such as pollution and over-fishing.
source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Tech%2Band%2BScience/Story/STIStory_384300.html
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