July 7, 2009

7-7-09

On July 7th, 2007 (luckiest day of the century) there was a worldwide global warming action concert series featuring some of the biggest musicians in the world. The event was put on by a coalition of groups including the Alliance for Climate Protection, chaired by Al Gore. Performances took place in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, and Hamburg, with special events broadcast from Antarctica, Kyoto, and Washington, DC. The 24 hour event set a record as the largest global entertainment event ever held, reaching 2 billion people in seven continents.

July 7th, 2009 was a relatively uneventful day as our activities on the cruise were concerned. The weather was foggy and eerily calm. At 3 AM it was still a little light out making me feel like I was in the twilight zone again. There were zero krill in the bongo net tow, something we had not seen since very early in the cruise. This meant that we had no water to filter for the night’s sampling station. And finally, I didn’t have any incubation water to filter until the following morning. The time did give us the opportunity to catch up on some sample processing with krill eye removal, lipofuscin extraction, and analysis. There is always plenty to do on the ship, even if you are not currently collecting samples. The methodical work does give one time to think about what the future may hold for this ecosystem (uh-oh, here I go again).

One half of the fish caught in the U.S annually, and one third worldwide, comes from the Bering Sea. The Bering Sea’s unusual productiveness comes from diatoms (the same type of organisms we are observing in our degradation experiment). Diatoms are large fast growing phytoplankton, which support large zooplankton. The large zooplankton, are then eaten by large fish and marine mammals. A recent study in Marine Ecology Progress Series from the lab of marine ecologist Dave Hutchins, found that a warmer Bering Sea will support smaller phytoplankton, creating a less productive ecosystem. The study was done under temperature and carbon dioxide levels predicted for 2100. Scientists are already seeing massive die offs among marine mammals and birds in the Bering Sea, potentially due to changes in the area.

According to Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center NASA satellite data shows that there has been a 50% decrease of perennial Arctic Ice from February, 2007 to February, 2008. While this is sea ice, which won’t cause sea level rise, it does pose a problem because of the change in albedo or reflectiveness of the region. Ice is light colored and reflects much more light than seawater does. With so much extra exposed seawater there is a greater capacity for the Arctic Ocean to absorb energy and continue to warm. These changes could lead to the type of scenarios described by Dr. Hutchins lab.

On June 7th, 2007 I was actually driving from New York back to Maryland after celebrating successful passage of my comprehensive exams for my graduate program. I got a big jolt of optimism from listening to the Live Earth broadcasts on the radio. It certainly felt like a lucky day to me. For the planet, it looks like 7-7-07 will only be the luckiest day of the century if we are willing to work for it. Otherwise, it will just be like any other day that passed by while we watched the world change at an unprecedented rate.

-Eli