Oceans Rule!

Our world is getting warmer and our oceans, the largest of ecosystems, are feeling the heat. Oceans keep our planet healthy. They cover over 70 percent of the globe and are home to 80 percent of all life on our planet from seaweed to sharks.

During the last century, Earth’s air temperature has risen almost a full degree Celsius which means that the world is warmer now than at any time in the last 1000 years! The three warmest years on record have all occurred within the last ten years; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980.

The oceans are warmer too. Worldwide, the average temperature of the oceans has risen almost one-half a degree Celsius in just the last fifty years. Doesn’t sound like much? Well it is!

Remember, the half a degree Celsius is averaged all over the globe. In tropical waters, average temperatures have risen as much as 1.7 degrees Celsius and many coral reefs are struggling to survive. When ocean temperatures get too high, corals lose the colorful algae that live inside them and turn white or bleach. Twenty-five percent of the world’s coral reefs have already been destroyed.

Arctic waters are even warmer and sea ice is melting faster than ever before. Since record keeping began in 1978, summer sea ice has been shrinking by about 60 million square kilometers (23 million square miles) each year. That’s like losing half of Ohio every summer. Experts predict the Arctic summertime ocean will be completely ice free well before the end of this century.

What happens when sea ice starts disappearing? Animals that depend on it to hunt go hungry. Canada’s Hudson Bay is now ice-free three weeks longer than it was thirty years ago. Hence, the polar bear population there has dropped 22 percent.

In the Antarctic, the number of Emperor penguins has shrunk by 50 percent during the past 25 years. Why? There is less sea ice to support the tiny shrimp-like krill that these penguins feed on.

And of course, the oceans are rising with the expanding warmer water and melting glaciers. Between 1993 and 2003, sea levels rose at an average rate of 3 mm (0.1 inch) per year. In this century the ocean will swell anywhere from 18 to 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches). Still want that beach front home?

The changes we see in our oceans are just beginning. If we don’t control global warming, the oceans will continue to warm, sea levels will continue to rise and sea life as we know it, will cease to exist. The oceans are too precious of a resource not to try and save them.