Climate Change Threatens Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
According to an online report from The Sydney Morning Herald, climate change-related damage to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef will cost us some $37.5 billion during this century.
If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced globally, the Great Barrier Reef is expected to be one of the first of Australia’s World Heritage sites seriously damaged. But chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation Dr John Schubert warned that with climate change happening much faster than predicted, Australia must plan to ”adapt” the reef to save it from some level of damage scientists say is inevitable.
According to the article:
”There needs to be extra emphasis on the adaptation side,” said Dr Schubert, who is also the outgoing chairman of the Commonwealth Bank and sits on the board of BHP-Billiton and Qantas. He said the report by Oxford Economics was a conservative assessment of the losses if the reef was damaged by permanent bleaching.
Bleaching (due to higher water temperatures) is not the only threat facing coral reefs. With atmospheric CO2 levels rising fast, ocean acidification is fast becoming THE major threat to all marine ecosystems.
The oceans absorb a lot of the CO2 emitted by human activities. When it dissolves in seawater it forms carbonic acid – this makes the oceans more acidic.
Shell-forming sea creatures (including coral polyps) can only deposit calcium in their shells when pH is between a certain critical range (see diagram).And if they can’t harden their shells they can’t survive, or form coral reefs for that matter.
As the oceans become more acidic, it is likely that large areas will become less hospitable to marine life – this will damage ocean food webs significantly as many crustaceans (and related species) are food for fish and other animals higher up the food chain.
More about ocen acidification coming soon…
