20150703_BB
Source: BBC News
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33370591
Date: 03/07/2015
Event: "Water will be more acidic and also hotter, thanks to climate change."
Credit: BBC News
People:
- Roger Harrabin: BBC's Environment Analyst
- Professor Michal Kucera: Professor of Micropaleontology/Paleoceanography, University of Bremen
- Professor Daniela Schmidt: Professorial Research Fellow in Palaeobiology, Bristol University
Roger Harrabin: Coral reefs - one of nature's marvels, now under threat from our emissions of carbon dioxide. CO2's a mildly acidic gas and these natural CO2 vents in Papua allow scientists to assess which creatures will survive as our CO2 emissions make the seas more acidic, everywhere. The branching corals that provide shelter for fish are unlikely to last the century. Shelfish are in danger, too. In Germany, they're experimenting to see how creatures can withstand the multiple impact we're having on the oceans. Water will be more acidic and also hotter, thanks to climate change. Michal Kucera studies microsopic shellfish called foraminifera.
Michal Kucera: These organisms, they can cope with elevated temperatures - they can cope with heat, they can cope with increased CO2 with acidification, but they have problems coping with both of them acting at the same time.
Roger Harrabin: Scientists are also looking to the past for lessons - they've drilled into the ocean floor to take long samples, tracing a timeline over millions of years. The sediment cores go to labs in Germany. The samples are chalky white for millions of years, from the fossils of tiny shellfish - that's until this dramatic point, 55 million years ago, when the oceans suddenly got hotter and more acidic and the shellfish disappeared. Scientists here say we humans are changing the seas ten times faster than at this catastrophic event. From the samples here in Bremen, scientists conclude that we will have irreversibly changed the seas by 2100.
Daniela Schmidt: My children will be alive in 2100. I would like them to be able to swim above a coral reef and enjoy its beauty. I would like them to be able to eat mussels and oysters and crayfish. And if we're continuing to release CO2 at the current rate, this is not going to happen.
Roger Harrabin: Some ocean systems will benefit from the changes we're inadvertently making, especially in the short term. But the report says most will suffer, unless we radically cut emissions of CO2. Roger Harrabin, BBC News.