Southern California Ocean Temperatures Highest In 1,400 Years, Study Shows

[hatrack]

Southern California coastal waters have warmed in recent decades to their highest level in 1,400 years, according to a study of fossilized plankton published this week in the journal Science. A group led by David Field of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla analyzed sediment cores drilled off the Santa Barbara coast. The cores contained thin layers of shells from microscopic plankton called foraminifera, or forams, that rained to the sea floor after the organisms died.

The cores showed that as ocean temperatures varied, the forams alternated between species that thrive in warmer waters and those that favor cooler waters. Field found that subtropical and tropical forams started to increase about 1925. The increase became more pronounced after the 1970s.

Part of the ocean warming was due to a cycle of climate variability called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which shifts about every 20 years. The most recent warm cycle lasted from 1977 to the mid-'90s. But Field found that the amount of tropical and subtropical forams rose during that period to its highest point in 1,400 years, suggesting that the increase was not just a product of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. "There's an additional warming … that makes the 20th century atypical," he said.

Experts estimate the decadal oscillation accounts for about a 1-degree variation in Southern California ocean temperatures. Over the last century, upper ocean temperatures here have warmed about 3 degrees.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-sci-plankton7jan07,1,2566677.story?coll=la-news-a_section
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[Tace]

1. It's Bracing To Witness The Environmental Changes Occuring...

and to see where they are leading. One of the ones that has me freaking is overfishing of the ocean fisheries. Something like half the people on the planet depend on ocean fish as their main source of protein. The ocean fisheries are well along a process of completely collapsing. The result will be catastrophic for billions of humans.

One thing is that ocean fisheries are remarkably resiliant... they can rebound a great deal within a few decades if we stop over-fishing. But, it's a daunting task to get corporations, and third-world poor, to stop, or drastically cut back.

[philb]

2. Florida waters are warmest in history also; with major impacts

http://www.flcv.com/green.html