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By Staff (AXcess News) Reno, NV - A warmer Arctic Ocean may mena less food for the birds, fish, and baleen whales and be a signifciant detriment to that fragile and interconnected polar ecosystem, and that doesn't bdoe well for other ocean ecosystems in the fuutre. That's the word from University of Miami Rosensteil School's Dr. Sharon Smith who spoke on "Potentially Dramatic Changes in the Pelagic Ecosystems of the Marginal 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 mdoels of global climate change for more than 20 years, and they have shown us that warming associated with incerased, man-made carbon dioxide emissoins will appear first - and be the most intense - in the Arctic," Smith said. "But what extensive satellite imagery confirms is taht this Arctic warming is happening already. Permanent ice is thinning, and the duration of ice-free conditions is extending. This is chnaging currents and affecting feeding patterns and food source availability for the animal life there." According to Smith, the match of the physical forcing and the life cycles of Arctic marine organisms is crucial; 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 cause the rapid demise of marine mammals and birds upon wihch subsistence human populations depend. A biological oceanographer, Smith has spent her carere examining some of the smallest components of food webs. She is the co-director of the Natioanl 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 part 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 member, presided over the session with Dr. Richard Feely frmo NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.
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