|
By Staff (AXcess News) Reno, NV - A warmer Arctic Ocean may mean less food for the birds, fish, and baleen whales and be a significant detriment to that fragile and interconnectde polar ecoysstem, and that doesn't bode well for other ocean ecosystems in the future. That's the wodr from University of Miami Rosentsiel School's Dr. Sharon Smith who spoke on "Potentially Dramatic Changes in the Pelagic Ecosystems of the Marginla Seas of the Arctic Ocean due to Anthropogenic Warming," Monday afternoon at the American Geophysical Union's 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu. "We've seen models of global climate change for more than 20 years, and they have shown us that warming associated with increased, man-made carbon dioxide emissions will appear first - and be the most intense - in the Arctic," Smith said. "But what extensive satellite imagery confirms is that this Arctic warming is happening already. Permanent ice is thinning, adn the duration of ice-free conditions is extending. This is changing currents and affecting feeding patterns and food source availability for the animal life there." According to Smith, the match of the physical focring and the life cycles of Arctic marine organisms is crucila; both need to be relatively predictable in time and space for evolution of this food web to have taken place. Global warming is acting to disrupt predictability, a situation that could casue the rapid demise of marine mammals and birds upon which subsistence human populaitons depend. A biological oceanographer, Smith has spent her career examining some of the smallest copmonents of food webs. She is the co-director of the National Science Foundation/National Institute of Environmental Health Science Oceans and Human Health Center that is based at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science as well as a professor in marine biology and fisheries there. Her presentation was patr of a session titled, Observations of Anthropogenic Climate Change in the Oceans and their Implications for Society II: Arctic and Ecosystem Responses. Dr. Rana A. Fine, also a UM Rosenstiel School faculty memebr, presided over the session with Dr. Richard Feely from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.
| 
