Oceanographers have identified a series of ocean hotspots around the world generated by strengthening wind systems that have driven oceanic currents, including the East Australian Current, polewards beyond their known boundaries.
The hotspots have formed alongside ocean currents that wash the east coast of the major continents and their warming proceeds at a rate far exceeding the average rate of ocean surface warming, according to an international science team whose work is published in the journal Nature Climate Change today.
Paper co-author, CSIRO's Dr Wenju Cai, said that while the finding has local ecological implications in the region surrounding the hotspots, the major influence is upon the ocean's ability to take up heat and carbon from the atmosphere.
In Australia's case, scientists report intensifying east-west winds at high latitudes (45º-55ºS) pushing southward and speeding up the gyre or swirl of currents circulating in the South Pacific, extending from South America to the Australian coast. The resulting changes in ocean circulation patterns have pushed the East Australian Current around 350 kilometres further south, with temperatures east of Tasmania as much as two degrees warmer than they were 60 years ago. "We would expect natural change in the oceans over decades or centuries but change with such elevated sea surface temperatures in a growing number of locations and in a synchronised manner was definitely not expected," said CSIRO's Dr Wenju Cai.
"Detecting these changes has been hindered by limited observations but with a combination of multi-national ocean watch systems and computer simulations we have been able to reconstruct an ocean history in which warming over the past century is 2-3 times faster than the global average ocean warming rate," says Dr Cai, a climate scientist at CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans Research Flagship.
The changes are characterised by a combination of currents pushing nearer to the polar regions and intensify with systematic changes of wind over both hemispheres, attributed to increasing greenhouse gases.
Dr Cai said the increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been the major driver of the surface warming of the Earth over the 20th century. This is projected to continue.
He said the research points to the need for a long-term monitoring network of the western boundary currents. In March next year, Australian scientists plan to deploy a series of moored ocean sensors across the East Australian Current to observe change season-to-season and year-to-year.
Lead author of the paper was Dr Lixin Wu, of the Ocean University of China, with contributing authors from five countries, many of whom are members of the Pacific Ocean Panel working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organisation.
The research was partly funded by a grant from the Australian Climate Change Science Program supported by the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.
A major climate maker is Thermohaline Circulation. The oceans are mostly composed of warm salty water near the surface over cold, less salty water in the ocean depths. These two regions don't mix except in certain special areas. The ocean currents, the movement of the ocean in the surface layer, are driven mostly by the wind. In certain areas near the polar oceans, the colder surface water also gets saltier due to evaporation or sea ice formation. In these regions, the surface water becomes dense enough to sink to the ocean depths. This pumping of surface water into the deep ocean forces the deep water to move horizontally until it can find an area on the world where it can rise back to the surface and close the current loop. This usually occurs in the equatorial ocean, mostly in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This very large, slow current is called the thermohaline circulation because it is caused by temperature and salinity (haline) variations.
The following animation shows one of the major regions where this pumping occurs, the North Atlantic Ocean around Greenland, Iceland, and the North Sea. The surface ocean current brings new water to this region from the South Atlantic via the Gulf Stream and the water returns to the South Atlantic via the North Atlantic Deep Water current. The continual influx of warm water into the North Atlantic polar ocean keeps the regions around Iceland and southern Greenland mostly free of sea ice year round.
The animation also shows another feature of the global ocean circulation: the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The region around latitude 60 south is the the only part of the Earth where the ocean can flow all the way around the world with no land in the way. As a result, both the surface and deep waters flow from west to east around Antarctica. This circumpolar motion links the world's oceans and allows the deep water circulation from the Atlantic to rise in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the surface circulation to close with the northward flow in the Atlantic.
The color on the world's ocean's at the beginning of this animation represents surface water density, with dark regions being most dense and light regions being least dense. The depths of the oceans are highly exaggerated to better illustrate the differences between the surface flows and deep water flows. The actual flows in this model are based on current theories of the thermohaline circulation rather than actual data. The thermohaline circulation is a very slow moving current that can be difficult to distinguish from general ocean circulation. Therefore, it is difficult to measure or simulate.
This animation first depicts thermohaline surface flows over surface density, and illustrates the sinking of water in the dense ocean near Iceland and Greenland. The surface of the ocean then fades away and the animation pulls back to show the global thermohaline circulation.
Video Credit : NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. The Blue Marble Next Generation data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC) and NASA's Earth Observatory.
The Alfred Toepfer Natural Heritage Scholarships 2012 are now open for applications! The award provides three young European conservationists with €3000 to undertake a study visit to one or more protected areas in European countries other than their own. They are awarded by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation and the EUROPARC Federation. The deadline for applications is Friday May 11th 2012.
The €3000, donated by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation (DE), gives successful scholars the chance to gather experience and strengthen their networks. Applicants must be under 35, of European nationality and themes for applications must be connected to the management of natural areas. Some guidelines to what these should be are provided. Applications can be filled in online and submitted by Friday 11th May 2012. All organisational aspects, such as the selection of candidates, are carried out by the EUROPARC Federation.
The Scholarships enhance international cooperation and advance the quality, innovation and European dimension of the management of natural areas, such as national parks. At the end of their study visit the scholars should produce a report on their findings which will be shared with practitioners in charge of managing Europe’s natural heritage. They are awarded at the annual EUROPARC Conference, which will be held in Genk, Belgium from 22nd – 25th October 2012.
In 2011 the scholarships were awarded to three individuals from Hungary, Scotland and Belgium. The topics the scholars are currently researching are: management techniques in protected areas, the creation of European partnerships and information sharing in the field of grazing management and improvement of communication between World Heritage marine sites in the Mediterranean Sea.
The EUROPARC Federation is committed to the protection and promotion of Europe’s protected areas and all they offer. We are the foremost and largest NGO representing European protected areas, uniting national parks, regional parks, nature parks and biosphere reserves in 39 countries, with the common aim of conserving Europe's unique variety of wildlife, habitats and landscapes.
The Alfred Toepfer Foundation is a charitable association with activities across Europe in the fields of culture, science, education and nature conservation. A particular focus of the Foundation is promoting European understanding whilst conserving cultural diversity. More information about the Alfred Toepfer Scholarships and the application form can be found online.
From humble beginnings, organization celebrates silver anniversary with gratitude, focus on new mission, and renewed commitment to safeguard nature for future generations.
Founded with a mission to safeguard biodiversity and the provisions of ecosystem services for the well-being of people, Conservation International (CI) is proud to mark 25 years since its establishment in 1987 and reflects today on the groundbreaking accomplishments of its first quarter century, as well as the major challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in its next.
The organization, which brings together approximately 900 diverse and passionate conservation professionals in nearly 30 countries, is headquartered in the Washington DC area, not far from where it was founded late one January evening in the Tabard Inn by conservationists Peter Seligmann and Spencer Beebe.
“It was a different era. Conservation of nature wasn’t top-of-mind at that time. Companies didn’t think about it, governments didn’t prioritize it, schools didn’t teach it. So we felt it was vital to show that nature and humanity are fundamentally linked and demonstrate the connections between conservation and economic well-being,” said Seligmann, CI’s Chairman and CEO.
In the organization’s first year, CI particularly focused its international efforts on engaging local communities in the three countries where Seligmann and Beebe had previously worked: Bolivia, Costa Rica and Mexico. Thirty-five colleagues joined the founders that first year, taking a leap of faith that their vision would one day help to revolutionize how people, governments, and businesses value and manage our planet’s natural capital.
“We believed tat in order to be successful in conservation, we had to involve local people and build local capacity, giving them ownership and control of conservation in their own countries,” said Seligmann, a graduate of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “We also felt strongly that, in order for our conservation efforts to have meaningful and positive impacts on people, we had to engage not only natural scientists and conservationists but social scientists and economists as well.”
The founding members of CI made personal sacrifices to lay its foundation, borrowing money and working out of their homes to help to turn their dreams into reality.
Looking back, they agree that the struggle was worth it. Today, CI is a top-rated charity with an operating budget of approximately $150 million USD annually and more than 1,000 partners and conservation investments in more than 40 countries. It has led or contributed to the protection of 106 million hectares (262 million acres) of land and sea around the world (terrestrial: 51 million hectares; marine: 55 million hectares); established innovative financing mechanisms to support long-term local efforts in priority regions; facilitated groundbreaking debt-for-nature swaps that led to the creation of parks and reserves; discovered and documented hundreds of new or endemic species in priority high-biodiversity countries to help inform conservation priorities; partnered with indigenous and traditional peoples from around the world to support their essential role as stewards of biodiversity; and impacted policy and corporate decisions that support sustainable development.
“Our approach is broad but strategic, focusing on the places that science tells us are the highest priorities for biodiversity and human well-being. It is also two-pronged: placing high value on engagement and partnership,” said Seligmann. “With our feet in the mud and our heads metaphorically in the sky, we believe that the most effective way to achieve behavior change and sustainable development is to bring key influencers to the table, offer our expertise and together achieve positive impacts from the inside out.”
Dr. Russell Mittermeier, a globally renowned primatologist and field biologist who speaks six languages fluently, has authored or co-authored 25 books and 655 scientific papers, and spends up to 200 days a year visiting conservation projects and leaders around the world, joined the organization as President in 1989 and still today leads Conservation International with Seligmann.
“Our geographic priorities and our investments have always been based on the best available science, and it is from that foundation that we are able to advise and support sound decision-making,” said Mittermeier. “But our approach to conservation has evolved over the past twenty-five years.
“In our early years, we focused on creating protected areas in the biodiversity hotspots, believing that we could stem the loss of species and ecosystems by creating safe havens for biodiversity. Protected areas of many different kinds continue to be among our most important tools in achieving conservation objectives and are also fundamentally important to human communities around the world. However, today we have come to the realization that they themselves aren’t enough. Species are still disappearing, many of the habitats that support life, including our own, continue to be degraded, and a large portion of the human population is still living under the poverty level. Clearly, we needed to take on a much broader agenda and think bigger, demonstrating that nature is not just worthy of conservation in its own right, it is also the most essential underpinning of long-term human well-being."
With that in mind, in 2010 CI redefined its institutional mission to expand the scope and scale of its work across the planet in order to tackle the greatest environmental challenges of our time, focusing more broadly on the direct connections between healthy ecosystems and the essential flows of goods and services they deliver to a growing human population, such as food, water, health, biodiversity, cultural heritage and climate security. The organization also forged new partnerships with international banks, civil society, and foundations to team global conservation initiatives with those investing in human development.
“Whereas we used to focus on creating parks and protecting natural areas for the sake of preserving our natural heritage, over time, we came to realize that we needed to reshape our approach to conservation, and tap into existing forces in order to address the scale of challenges facing governments and business, such as global poverty, food insecurity, water scarcity, economic development and supply chain flows,” said Seligmann. “In our next 25 years, we have to constantly be creating new alliances and bringing more and more people into our conservation efforts so that together, we can tackle these shared concerns with our pooled passion and resources.”
“To achieve this, we are demonstrating proof of concept at the local level, sharing and scaling these solutions up to larger and larger landscapes or regions, and helping communities, businesses, banks and governments see that it is in their enlightened self-interest to conserve, sustainably manage and properly value our natural wealth,” added Seligmann. “We believe that with this bottom-up and top-down approach, we now have the best chance of gaining broad game-changing support for conservation.”
Over the course of its 25 years, CI has worked with partners in five continents. It’s used three different logos, the most recent of which was introduced in 2010 when the organization refined its mission. It has successfully attracted the dedicated support of diverse, global visionaries in business, science, entertainment and philanthropy, as well as indigenous leaders from Brazil and Philippines, to its Board of Directors, Chairman’s Council and Business & Sustainability Council. And it has adapted to new challenges.
On the occasion of the anniversary, co-founder Spencer Beebe, who subsequently moved on from CI to found and lead Ecotrust in Portland Washington sent congratulations to the board, staff and “courageous team of individuals at CI who together put their faith in a more natural model of development, one that emerges bottom up from the very particular and distinctive qualities of people and place”.
Conservation International Board Member and Trustee William Wrigley, Jr. said, “CI is a unique organization with an incredible ability to take science and practical thinking and rapidly turn it into demonstrable action that truly has a positive impact on humanity and our environment. The last twenty-five years of CI’s accomplishments have been nothing short of extraordinary and the pace of meaningful change facilitated by CI is increasing every year.”
Seligmann said, “Twenty-five years ago we took a leap of faith. We jumped out on our own and built something against all odds. We’re making the same leap of faith today. The next four decades are going to be a serious challenge as our population soars to more than nine billion in forty years and ten billion by the end of this century. Demand for energy, food and water is going to double in the next four decades and we only have one planet to resource this increasing demand. Conservation is not a luxury anymore. It’s a necessity. So we can’t slow down. We have to really intensify.”
1987-2012: A SELECTION OF CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL’S KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
Debt for Nature swaps: CI’s innovative leadership in debt-for-nature swaps dates back to its founding year, 1987, when it purchased a portion of Bolivia’s foreign debt owed to a commercial creditor. In return, the Bolivian government redirected the funds to support protection of 3.7 million acres in and around the Beni Biosphere Reserve. Since then CI and its partners have played a key role in a number of debt-for-nature deals, including: 2004: the United States and Colombia reached an agreement on a debt-for-nature swap that resulted in forgiveness of $10 million of Colombia’s debt to the United States. As part of the deal, Colombia agreed to invest at least this amount over 12 years to protect nearly 11 million acres of its tropical forests. GCF, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund contributed $1.4 million toward the deal; 2006: CI played a key role in a 2006 deal between the United States and Guatemala that cancelled $24 million of Guatemala’s debt to the United States and channeled that money into a local fund for conservation grants to be distributed over the next 15 years. CI contributed $1 million to the swap, including $700,000 from the Global Conservation Fund (GCF) and $300,000 from CEPF. The Nature Conservancy was also a partner in the deal; 2007: An agreement with the United States forgave $26 million of Costa Rica’s debt in return for a commitment from Costa Rica to redirect that amount toward tropical forest conservation activities in six of the most important natural areas over the next 16 years. Both CI and The Nature Conservancy contributed to the purchase of the debt.
Biodiversity Hotspots - In 1989 Conservation International adopted a seminal concept of biodiversity hotspots, created by British ecologist Norman Myers. Myers’ hotspots served as CI’s institutional blueprint, and in 1999, CI conducted a global review, which introduced quantitative thresholds for the designation of biodiversity hotspots. The 1999 analysis identified 25 biodiversity hotspots and emerged as the dominant paradigm for global conservation strategy. Hotspots hold especially high numbers of endemic species, yet their combined area of remaining habitat covers only 2.3 percent of the Earth's land surface. Each hotspot faces extreme threats and has already lost at least 70 percent of its original natural vegetation. As of 2011, 35 biodiversity hotspots have been identified.
CI’s Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) – Launched in 1990, the idea behind the creation of CI's Rapid Assessment Program was to build a team of the best field biologists from different disciplines, and create a type of ecological SWAT team that could accurately assess the health of an ecosystem in a fraction of the time it would normally take. The flagship program has conducted 80 scientific field surveys in 27 countries, contributing to the creation or improvement of nearly 21 million hectares of protected areas worldwide (~81,000 square miles) and the discovery of 1,300 species new to science. RAP surveys have also contributed a financial investment of more than $5.3 million into local communities and national economies through funding that is primarily spent in-country and they have trained more than 400 students and scientists in developing countries. Notable "RAP Stars" discovered through the years include species that have been nicknamed the "walking shark", the “Yoda bat” and the “ET salamander”.
Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) – A financing mechanism established under the leadership of CI in 2000, CEPF pools global funding resources to build the capacity of civil society organizations to meet local needs in critical conservation hotspots. An impressive collaboration among Conservation International, l'Agence Française de Développement, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the World Bank, CEPF’s Secretariat is based at CI's Arlington headquarters. Since its inception, the fund has committed more than $137 million and leveraged an additional $320 million to help more than 1,600 civil society organizations implement diverse projects to safeguard biodiversity hotspots in 53 countries. The result has been strengthened civil society, 12 million hectares of new or expanded protected areas and improved management of an additional 21 million hectares of globally important lands.
CI’s Global Conservation Fund (GCF) finances the creation, expansion, and long-term management of protected areas, supporting partners in biodiversity hotspots to help places in peril reverse course. Created in 2001, the GCF launched with a $100-million commitment from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The fund has done more than any other instrument of its kind to support the creation of new protected areas in the biodiversity hotspots and high-biodiversity wilderness areas, supporting the creation and expansion of more than 79 million hectares of terrestrial and marine protected areas. GCF has given grants to CI’s regional programs and more than 40 incredible partners – from The Nature Conservancy to Association FANAMBY in Madagascar to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund.
Indigenous and Traditional Peoples’ Program - In 2003, CI consolidated its many years of work with indigenous and traditional peoples into the Indigenous and Traditional Peoples Program, a global program that works to strengthen the capacities of Indigenous and traditional peoples and conservationists to work through policy, practice and partnership toward mutual goals. The program is guided by CI's institutional policy, Indigenous Peoples and Conservation International: Principles for Partnership, which focus on transparency, participation, consent, self-determination and cultural identity, traditional knowledge, tenure systems and conflict resolution. Some of CI’s most important projects over the past two decades include partnerships with the Kayapó Indians of the Brazilian Amazon, the Trio people of southern Suriname and the Wai-Wai of Guyana. Today, CI works with more than 50 indigenous groups around the world and counts among its board of directors leaders from Brazil’s Kayapó and the Philippines’ Igorot peoples. This collaborative approach has led to a string of successes—helping the Wai-Wai receive absolute title to their lands, creating a long-term trust fund to support the Kayapó and establishing Ecuador’s Socio Bosque program, which pays indigenous communities for reducing carbon emissions by protecting standing forest. In 2011, the work of the ITPP became the foundation for a new Social Policy and Practice Department that focuses on the intersection of conservation and human wellbeing in support of CI’s new mission
Center for Environmental Leadership in Business - For more than 20 years, CI has actively engaged with corporations for the purpose of improving environmental practices and conserving nature. Through its Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, founded in 2000, CI challenges and collaborates with companies to minimize environmental impacts and to harness private sector ingenuity on behalf of healthy ecosystems and human well-being. Engaging with multinational corporations such as Walmart, Starbucks, Marriott, and others, CI helps to ensure that effective safeguards for biodiversity and ecosystem services are incorporated fully into business operations and supply chains.
Seascapes & Pacific Oceanscape - in recent years, CI has focused in supporting the sustainable management of priority marine conservation regions where strategic actions can literally make a world of difference. These critical "Seascapes" in waters off Indonesia, Philippines, Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador extend beyond country boundaries, creating opportunities for governments, multinational corporations, and others to work together to conserve the seas and the diverse marine life that is the lifeline for people living near their shores. CI is also supporting the implementation of a bold new framework for ocean management in the globally important Pacific Islands region, where island leaders have come together to create a Pacific Oceanscape, the largest government-endorsed marine managed initiative on Earth at 38.5 million square kilometers (nearly 24 million square miles). This area is collectively larger than the land territories of the United States, Canada and Mexico combined, and will help vulnerable island populations in the region build resilience in ocean ecosystems so that marine life, and people, have the best chance of adapting to the impacts climate change.
The Tropical Ecology, Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) Network – Conceived in 2001, this ambitious program monitors long-term trends in biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate using standardized methods of data collection so that scientists anywhere on Earth can quantify how climate change is affecting tropical ecosystems. Akin to an early warning system for nature, TEAM delivers multi-scale, real-time understanding of how key elements of Earth’s operating system — climate, carbon stocks, biodiversity — are changing and what this means for people. Created by Conservation International, the TEAM Network is now a partnership of more than 80 organizations in 17 countries throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, including: CI, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The TEAM Network’s research and systems have directly contributed to: the production of 350,000 terrestrial vertebrate images from camera traps; population-level information on over 300 species for the IUCN Species Survival Commission; data to calibrate remote sensing measurements of forest carbon at large spatial scales by Scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and a network of World Meteorological Organization compliant climate stations in natural areas where there may not be any other climate stations for hundreds of miles.
Conservation International (CI) - Building upon a strong foundation of science, partnership and field demonstration, CI empowers societies to responsibly and sustainably care for nature, our global biodiversity, for the long term well-being of people. Founded in 1987 and marking its 25th anniversary in 2012, CI has headquarters in the Washington DC area, and 900 employees working in nearly 30 countries on four continents, plus 1,000+ partners around the world.
