Climate Change in California. Part 6

wyeth surfers bob up and down with this world as they ride the waves seem to recreate the evolution of man fish like they slide onto their boards and channel four's and finding live right so beneath the surface the ocean seems to agree he means signing it aspires treating molecules and energy to the air around marine biologist john mccowen regards the scene from a bluff at the scripps institution of oceanography and he says that's the atmosphere gets out so that notion oh wait for half a century mcgowan has studied the california current stream of water then travel south from the gulf of alaska the water brings with it a lot of cooperation which in reykjavik he says the surface water in the current is now about one degree warmer and thus less than

the energy mix deep water up into surface water was much higher rate of important nutrient rich people were taking the gallon has documented a nearly seventy percent drop in plankton in the california current he believes it's contributed to the decline of fisheries and a seabird called the city's your water and it isn't mourning is partially responsible for the reduction of forces in california human activities might not be responsible for all of the morning in the last century but most scientists project significant amount of human caused warming in the future greenhouse gases are also having a direct effect on the sea in a lab at scripps marine chemist andrew dickson studies the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the oceans he estimates half of the seo to people of put into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution has settled into the ocean that's helped us avoid additional warming in the short term but the implications are troubling when you add from the outside to water

the ground outside a sense he makes the water slightly more acidic get to see water is typically thought of the surface the water as the agent about a point to when you changed ph about one three of a unit which is what we feel may happen within this century relative to what it used to be like the beating industrial pollution than doubled our city kansas he says this change in ocean chemistry is reducing the amount of carbon that corals and other sea creatures use to build skeletons and shells so as we decrease the comic vine concentration it actually makes it more difficult for these organisms to precipitate calcium carbonate andrew dickson says that includes microscopic organisms at the base of the marine food web especially tiny mollusks called terra pods it's protected that why the later part of the century in the northern and southern ocean's surface water will be under saturated with respect to this form of council comic remains any shells but of that will dissolve leading them essentially naked whether this

is problematic or not nobody really knows carbon dioxide dissolves better in cold water so acidification is more dramatic at higher latitudes that andrew dickson says it would eventually change life forms along the california coast you have to walk up titles will fight any number of things from ripple starts small lobster a variety of shells all these the calcium carbonate so something that makes it harder for things to grow is bound to make it worse in its long history oceans had been more acidic before but the most striking thing about what's happening now is it's happening so quickly one of the things it's obvious in the past is that certain organisms adapted and lived through this would that happen when it changes so much faster maybe fifty two hundred times faster we doubt it but we don't know on the bluff marine biologist john mccowen shakes his head over his colleagues projections that the planet warm by as much as ten

degrees and the center aisle here we don't have to wait until something really bad happened seven major work and no need for all that beginning to where there's more mcgowan returns to his office hasn't reached reads this is a nineteen ninety the surfers shrink to black suspects involved in a vast or since and i'm not susceptible to be an instance in