Skynews interview!! Climate change, what research do we do at SAMS? and have I done in the past?

I was super excited to be asked to speak to Sky News about climate change and what projects I have been involved with at SAMS and BAS to try and work out what is actually changing with our climate and how it is going to affect our marine world and how we use it sustainably. Here are some of the things I spoke about, you can see it live in the New Year.

Why do I/we study the oceans? The facts?!

Oceans cover 71% of the planet and make up 95% of space available to life and these oceans are our support system and the lungs of our planet. The oceans produce all of the oxygen we breathe, from animals like phytoplankton through photosynthesis. 

The ocean provides us with a place to exercise, socialise, and provides free goods and services, the food we eat, and the oxygen we breathe. Not only that, but the oceans also regulate the global climate, mediate temperatures, and drive the weather systems that we plan our short weekends by. Our climate can determine when we get massive rainfall, droughts or floods..it is truly incredible.

What is the craic with carbon?

Here is the ARISE blog where more information about the carbon cycle can be found, you can contact them if you have any questions or would like to know more about their project!

The ocean is also the largest store of carbon where 80% of global carbon is cycled through the ocean. The industrial revolution...but what does that even mean. Since the industrial revolution so in the last 200 years 1/3rd of C02 is produced by us humans have been absorbed by the oceans and heat from the rising greenhouse gases, all of this extra C02 causes the ocean acidity to increase causing ocean acidification which we are seeing most visually and known about on the great barrier reef as the carbon skeletons breakdown this means the coral reef support a healthy ocean habitat for species that rely on them for food and protection. I have seen and studied this with my own eyes in Koh Tao in Thailand where I worked for a month on the New Heaven marine conservation program. 

Animals like turtles are being affected by dying coral reefs! 

This was back in 2012 straight after school. It was a great conservation program and I learned a lot. Biorock is an amazing system whereby we "transplanted dying, broken, and vulnerable coral fragments onto the structures for rehabilitation, collecting growth rates and assessing the percentage cover of the corals on the structure to compile data on its effectiveness as a reef restoration technique." 

A little project like this is great, however, we need a big global effort. The United Nations climate change conference COP26 next year aims to reduce greenhouse gases and share knowledge and experience through world leaders. Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, addressed the U.N.'s Climate Action Summit last year, ""My message is that we'll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!...For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.....The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control....Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist....How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions?"

The people on this planet are finally waking up and wanting to make the change! Cutting our greenhouse emissions is the first step. If it is all a bit daunting, here are a few steps that the WWF recommend: 

1.Learn more about your carbon emissions. 

2.Commute by carpooling or using mass transit. ...

3. Plan and combine trips. ...

1. 4. Drive more efficiently. ...
2. 
   
3. 5. Switch to “green power.” Switch to electricity generated by energy sources with low—or no—routine emissions of carbon dioxide.

Next topic, why does plankton matter?

Calanus a species of zooplankton, migrate to hibernate at these deeper depths (600-1400 m) during the winter so that they can preserve the omega 3 that they have build up by eating lots of juicy omega 3 enriched diatoms. By migrating they save energy and are less available for predation. This vertical downward migration of copepods transfers lipid carbon deep into the ocean where it is metabolised at the same rate as sinking detritus. Noone has yet calculated how much carbon is being drawn to depths by Calanus copepods alone!

This copepod in the photo above has large lipid reserves (the blue outline) and is the main trophic link between phytoplankton and higher trophic levels in the North Atlantic and Arctic. The reserves vary over the year and with developmental stages. We (the DIAPOD CAO project) want to develop an understanding of how the omega-3 fatty acid content of Calanus is affected by the food environment and in turn, dictates patterns of their diapause (which I will explain next)- and reproductive success.

At BAS in 2016 we dived on icebergs (the photo was taken of myself and Kate Stanton the dive officer by Ben Robinson the Marine Biologist using his ROV called Debra) over the winter and found that it was filled with Diatoms! The diatoms had set themself up overwinter on undulating cusps on icebergs where they were just getting enough light through the surface of the sea ice and enough nutrients from the small currents under the ice.

 

Calanus undergo a dormant period called diapause during their juvenile development. As they develop they accumulate lipid energy stores. Some of the copepods will then continue to develop to adulthood and become reproductively active. During periods of low food availability, other individual copepods will migrate to deep water, slow their metabolism, and remain dormant for several months. DIAPOD is researching how to understand and predict the timing of diapause entry and exit and the ‘parking’ depth of the three calanoids. On exit of diapause, they swim to the surface, develop into adults, and mate.

All of this represents a drawdown of the atmospheric C02 which is represented in the global carbon cycle. This lipid pump has previously not been incorporated into the estimates of deep ocean carbon sequestration and like other parts of the biological pump, the lipid pump does not remove surface nutrients!

Why do we care about all of this?

What we are, as scientists are trying to work out is when we are going to reach the tipping point as the climate responds to increasing carbon emissions which will cause extreme weather events, changing ocean currents, rising sea levels, and temperatures, melting sea ice, and glaciers. We at SAMS quantify and predict how the variability in marine environments on varying timescales from sea lochs to ocean basins increase in rain increases runoff which increases nutrient runoff which causes harmful algae blooms (the fish we eat and where we swim is affected). Prediction of these changes of natural ecosystems to see how regional shifts will respond to climate change. All of these are aggravated by impacts from overfishing, pollution, and habitat degradation

I spoke about all of this and what we do at SAMS, CAO, and BAS for Sky News last week for a pilot on a new climate program that will be airing in the New Year!

Climate change and the reason for why Santa is moving to the South Pole for Christmas!?

I have given a few talks over the years and I finished one talk by explaining this topic and asking the question....Why is this all so unique and important? Why is researching the polar regions helping us? Why is researching how the Arctic ice retreating will open up more shipping lanes? Most importantly why is Santa moving? 

"If we want to survive, “we need to learn to work with nature, not against it."

Studying this change is important because it enables us to verify the natural way in which the climate works and also gain a better understanding of the relationship between the different parts of the atmosphere. For example, we can see how the temperature and CO2 levels are related (CO2 is the main greenhouse gas we hear so much about these days). It also enables us to understand the importance of what is happening today in regards to the rapid rise in temperatures, a phenomenon which has never been so fast. 

Lastly, as David Attenborough explains in his latest documentary and it is his witness statement to 'Life on Our Planet..."Biodiversity", Attenborough argues, "is the answer to these problems. The significance of biodiversity in maintaining ecosystems both in our oceans and on land is not just so animals and plants can flourish, but so humanity can survive. Healthy and diverse oceans and forests are one of our most important natural allies in removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere – acting essentially as “carbon sponges” – and that rewilding the majority of these spaces is our key to survival. The overarching message as the documentary draws to a close is that it’s still not too late if we act now. 

It paints a picture of a future world where society has finally achieved harmony with the natural world.

 This includes rewilding vast expanses of nature and shifting from a dependency on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources as well as fine-tuning our agricultural processes and diets to minimise our damaging impact. 

To get his point across he uses the massive human disaster of Chernobyl where the opening and closing scenes are filmed in Chernobyl, Ukraine. As the camera pulls back, the healed aftermath of the explosion is revealed: an entire city overgrown with foliage, reclaimed by local wildlife. In the absence of humans, the environment has re-established a balanced ecosystem. The real threat is not to the survival of the planet, Attenborough warns, but to the survival of humanity. 

"If we want to survive, “we need to learn to work with nature, not against it."

If this does not stick into people's minds and make people change what they do from switching lights off, eating less meat, changing energy providers, biking more places, working from home to save fuel and emissions then I do not know what will!