Never mind predictions of catastrophic bleaching from global warming, cold is the culprit of this story. With ocean heat content now shown to be dropping slightly since 2005, there is even greater concern.
Excerpts from Physorg.com: Coral in Florida Keys suffers lethal hit from cold
January 30, 2010 By Curtis Morgan
Bitter cold this month may have wiped out many of the shallow water corals in the Keys.
Scientists have only begun assessments, with dive teams looking for “bleaching” that is a telltale indicator of temperature stress in sensitive corals, but initial reports are bleak. The impact could extend from Key Largo through the Dry Tortugas west of Key West, a vast expanse that covers some of the prettiest and healthiest reefs in North America.
Given the depth and duration of frigid weather, Meaghan Johnson, marine science coordinator for The Nature Conservancy, expected to see losses. But she was stunned by what she saw when diving a patch reef 2.5 miles off Harry Harris Park in Key Largo.
Star and brain corals, large species that can take hundreds of years to grow, were as white and lifeless as bones, frozen to death. There were also dead sea turtles, eels and parrotfish littering the bottom.
“Corals didn’t even have a chance to bleach. They just went straight to dead,” said Johnson, who joined teams of divers last week surveying reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. “It’s really ecosystem-wide mortality.”
The record chill that gripped South Florida for two weeks has taken a heavy toll on wildlife — particularly marine life.
…
Many of the Florida Keys’ signature diving destinations such as Carysfort, Molasses and Sombrero reefs _ as well as deeper reefs off Miami-Dade and Broward — are believed to have escaped heavy losses, thanks to warming effects of the Gulf Stream. But shallower reefs took a serious, perhaps unprecedented hit, said Billy Causey, Southeast regional director of national marine sanctuaries for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
…
Cold-water bleaching is unusual, last occurring in 1977, the year it snowed in Miami. It killed hundreds of acres of staghorn and elkhorn corals across the Keys. Neither species has recovered, both becoming the first corals to be federally listed as threatened in 2006.
This big chill, said Causey, shapes up worse.
“They were exposed to temperatures much colder, that went on longer, than what they were exposed to three decades ago,” he said.
Typical winter lows in-shore hover in the mid- to high-60s in the Keys.
At its coldest more than a week ago, a Key Largo reef monitor recorded 52. At Munson Reef, just about a half-mile off the Newfound Harbor Keys near Big Pine Key, it hit 56.
At Munson Reef, said Cory Walter, a biologist for Mote Marine Laboratory in Summerland Key, scientists saw losses similar to what was reported off Key Largo. Dead eels, dead hogfish, dead coral — including big coral head 5- to 6-feet wide, bleached white with only fringes of decaying tissue.
“They were as big, as tall, as me. They were pretty much dead,” said Walter, who coordinates Mote’s BleachWatch program, which monitors reefs.
Read the entire story at physorg.com
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
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I miss global warming. Going to take a dent out of tourism for the area as well.
Oh you silly deniers.
It’s not the cold. It’s CO2 causing “osteoporosis of the seas”.
Jane Lubchecno
“I call ocean acidification climate change’s evil twin,” she says. “Part of the need to reduce carbon emissions is to both slow down the rate of climate change but also to start repairing the damage that is being done to oceans. As the oceans become more acidic, it’s harder for corals, oysters, clams, crabs, mussels, lobsters to make their shells or their hard parts, and they dissolve faster. Another way to think of ocean acidification is as osteoporosis of the seas.”
Everybody repeats:
“It’s worse than we thought. If we don’t stop global warming now we will all freeze to death.”
It is not just Florida. Spent part of January in Cuba, close to freezing temperatures and dead coral on the shallow dive areas off the coast of Cayo Coco. Also quite a heavy storm which lasted several days which damaged the coral as well.
So, too warm leads to bleaching, but when it’s too cold, it skips bleaching and goes straight to dead.
Listen when nature speaks: cold is worse than warm.
What’s most astonishing is that you can find this story at physorg.com.
No worries,
just send the hot air team (Therminator as the captain) http://www.cyberkonsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/therminator.jpg
The blessed process of life: Cold increases carbon dioxide solubility in water, which in turn promotes CO2 RE-CAPTURE, fixation, as calcium carbonate (white in color). Then: No Cap&Trade needed.
With all those dead fish and damaged reefs you would think they could come up with more than a photo of one dead coral. So, I’m looking to see what I can find, and lo and behold, …I haven’t found anything yet, except this important announcement.
BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU SWIM IN FLORIDA!
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/wildlife-officials-to-re-stock-palm-springs-pond-120359.html
Back to the search for photos of the damage.
I have no doubt the corals will recover again as they have done for millions of years and even more drastic temperature changes.
No grounds for any alarmism in either way, war or cold.
Ok, some of the shallow water corals have died, ok… but how many people died during that same time because of the cold?
Like everything else in the AGW camp, you have to take their observations with a mountain of salt.
Steve Oregon – where does that woman get her ‘information’ from..?
I’ve seen calculations which prove that if all possible CO2 were dumped in the sea, it would reduce the basic figure from 8.2 to 8.0 – so still significantly alkaline.
The business about crabs etc not being able to form shells is also rubbish – never heard of freshwater snails, etc..? Rain water is slightly acidic (pH about 5.5) – so according to Jane they’d all be dissolving…
We live in Sarasota, Florida and don’t ever remember so many dead fish from a cold snap(s). Occasionally the red tide will strike during the summer months and do this, but when you walk on the beach now there is a wide assortment of sea life washed up – seems like an inordinate amount of snook in the mix.
While much has been made about the Manatee ( http://www.savethemanatee.org/news_feature_cold_weather_10.html ) population being hit, the local articles have tried to tag this as being a result of “global warming or climate change” – so the beat goes on in that respect…
It’s amazing (and frustrating) that most in the media find a way to connect any weather or environmental event to global warming. They can’t write an article or deliver news without hitting the “this is a result of us nasty humans bringing global warming upon ourselves” button.
I’m so tired of that spin…
Maybe increased CO2 will help to save them:
“In fact, the increase in the CO2 content of the modern atmosphere appears to have not been negative at all (on corals). In fact, it appears to have been positive, which should only have been expected in light of what we know about the beneficial influence of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on the photosynthetic rates of marine microalgae, such as those that comprise the food-producing symbiotic zooxanthellae of corals”
http://www.co2science.org//articles/V10/N13/B2.php
The warmists just don’t get it. Warm is better, cold kills.
Water certainly looks cold near Florida. Darn global warming!
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
A bit off topic, but surely now is the time for a simple timeline of this scam to be published, for the benefit of all those who are just realising that there is a problem. This includes the MSM journalists…
There has been an upsurge in warmer excuses – ‘this is one minor mistake – the basic science is sound – these are just a few troublemakers’. A simple history with hyperlinks would be a very useful tool for this type of thing…
I envisage something like John Daly’s site, but shorter and slicker. Off the top of my head, here are a few high-level subject headings. I’ve probably got some things wrong, but I seem to remember this sequence:
1- Collected weather station stats start to show a temperature increase from a low in 1970
2 – In the UK PM Thatcher starts CRU with remit to attack coal fuel and miners
3 – In the US Hansen starts agitating for research into warming threat
4 – the ‘CO2 amplified by water vapour’ mechanism is proposed
5 – the first computer models are developed to predict warming. At this time they seem to work.
6 – UN is persuaded to start the IPCC
7 – Kyoto conference brings governments on board and starts establishing a ‘Global Warming/Climate Change infrastucture, which rapidly becomes scientific orthodoxy.
8 – Steve McIntyre questions Mann Hockey stick and starts technical argument blog
9 – Several other blogs start to question other aspects of AGW – notably WUWT
10 – Collected weather stats start to show a halt in the temperature rise at about 2000, and the models cease to match reality.
11 – Major players in the Climate Change science field begin to have problems continuing their scientific justifications as the temperatures start to fall. Dubious science begins to be done in an effort to hide this.
12 – Blogs start to uncover various dubious scientific practices
13 – These blogs are generally ignored until the Climategate leak occurs. Then the mainstream newspapers start to signal the breaking of a scandal.
Someone who knows a lot more about it than me could do a useful check-list for journalists – they really need this sort of thing, otherwise they have to do their own research, and you can’t find much out in a pub…..
Take it to the bank. This WILL be used as evidence of global warming….
mkurbo
The list of things allegedly effected or traumatised by GW is so long that nobody takes it seriously anymore. Everyone knows they are a bunch of charlatans. Everyone laughed at the SOTU address as soon as Obama mentioned global warming. It’s been reduced to a joke.
The Warmists were not happy with the warm world they inhabited.
Man is to blame.
Now they are unhappy with the cooling world they inhabit.
Man is to blame.
Nothing, it seems, will ever satisfy them.
They should look in the mirror… and blame themselves.
Dodgy Geezer
Your endeavour is a noble one, but the scandal is well documented in various books already.
David (10:56:18) said:
However, what is the pH of the freshwater environments where freshwater snails live and grow etc?
“With ocean heat content now shown to be dropping slightly since 2005, there is even greater concern.”
What a strange interpretation. If that little wiggle in the ocean heat content is cause for concern in this particular context, then there wouldn’t have been any coral anywhere this whole century.
What’s more interesting to note is that a single season’s extreme weather fluctuation can be enough to cause major and lasting changes to an ecosystem someplace.
Surely a tragedy regardless of cause. I’ve snorkeled the Keys many times. They’re a Floridian prize for sure. But now Man has frozen them with his warming.
Hey, mkurbo, I lived in St. Pete for years. Bad, bad news about the snook. I used to fish them in Channel A on the Hillsborough. I remember the Red Tide, too. Seems like I remember talk about the frequency of Red Tide was brought on by AGW.
Sign me,
Also tired of that spin…
Steve Oregon (10:35:32) :
Oh you silly deniers.
It’s not the cold. It’s CO2 causing “osteoporosis of the seas”.
Not True!
Jane Lubchecno also says
“We cannot say definitively that these dead zones are caused by climate change, but we can say that they are consistent with our understanding of climate change dynamics. Moreover, there is no other obvious explanation for the appearance of dead zones off an open coast such as ours. This dead zone is a consequence of changes in oceanic and atmospheric conditions, not runoff of nutrients from the land.”
What is the truth?
Temperature
Coral species live within a relatively narrow temperature margin, and anomalously low and high sea temperatures can induce coral bleaching. Bleaching events occur during sudden temperature drops accompanying intense upwelling episodes, (-3 º C to -5 º C for 5-10 days), seasonal cold-air outbreaks. Bleaching is much more frequently reported from elevated se water temperature. A small positive anomaly of 1-2 º C for 5-10 weeks during the summer season will usually induce bleaching.
Solar Irradiance
Bleaching during the summer months, during seasonal temperature and irradiance maxima often occurs disproportionately in shallow-living corals and on the exposed summits of colonies. Solar radiation has been suspected to play a role in coral bleaching. Both photosyntheticaly active radiation (PAR, 400-700nm) and ultraviolet radiation (UVR, 280-400nm) have been implicated in bleaching.