The spectre of an ocean floor littered with dead shellfish, rock fish, sea stars and other marine life off the Oregon coast spurred Mark Snyder, aclimate change expert, to investigate whether California's coast faced a similar calamity. It could, the University of California Santa Cruz earth scientist said, citing climate change, which some scientists believe is responsible for stronger and more persistent winds along the coast. There's no debate that windier conditions drive more upwelling of nutrient-rich deep ocean waters.
The spectre of an ocean floor littered with dead shellfish, rock fish, sea stars and other marine life off the Oregon coast spurred Mark Snyder, aclimate change expert, to investigate whether California's coast faced a similar calamity.
It could, the University of California Santa Cruz earth scientist said, citing climate change, which some scientists believe is responsible for stronger and more persistent winds along the coast. There's no debate that windier conditions drive more upwelling of nutrient-rich deep ocean waters.
At normal levels, this upwelling sustains the abundance of marine life, but too much of these rich waters leads to a boom-and-bust cycle that ultimately creates ocean "dead zones" with little or no oxygen. Marine life that can't swim or scuttle away from these lethal zones suffocate.
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To assess future wind and upwelling scenarios along the California coast, Snyder and his colleagues at UC Santa Cruz ran climate simulations for two time periods. One spanned from 1968 to 2000, verifying the accuracy of the modelling. The second simulated the region's estimated climate from 2038 to 2070, using the intergovernmental panel on climate change "high-growth" emissions projections. Snyder said he chose the high emissions scenario because today's are exceeding earlier IPCC estimates.
The results showed increases in wind speeds of as much as 2 meters per second, a 40% increase from current wind speeds, which now average 5 meters per second, Snyder said.
The change in wind speeds is already happening, Snyder said. California winds have been growing in strength in the past 30 years.
Snyder said he knows his hypothesis needs more research, so he'll know whether to continue pursuing it or to discard it. The latter is unlikely, he said, given the new cycle of dead zones on the Oregon and Washington coasts that started in 2002.
Article Continues:Â http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/02/climate-change-west-coast-winds
