Essay Sample on IPCC AR5: Climate Change and Its Impact on Oceans

The Fifth Assessment Report by IPCC has continued strengthening our understanding of climate change. The ocean plays a critical role in the climate system and impacted by temperature rising and ocean acidification. AR5 documented that land and ocean temperatures are increasing, sea level is rising, the ocean is acidifying, and ice cover is shrinking as greenhouse gas concentration and emission increase. These changes hamper the entire ecosystem and the species behavior locally regionally or globally. However, climate change has a high impact on human activities. People have witnessed a lot of change in their environment with many consequences like an increase of intense storm, disruption of weather patterns affecting their livelihood in terms of food security and health. This research will show how ocean warming and acidification affect sediment-dwelling invertebrates. It will also elaborate on how climate forcing affects the ecosystem and behavior of species in heterogeneous distribution as well as investigating the role of climate forcing in the marine environment on synergistic and antagonistic species interaction.

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Oceans' temperatures are rising and increasingly taking heat waves from the effect of climate change. Climate change is a change in weather phenomena brought by an increase in global temperatures. Many factors cause a rise in temperatures in the ocean, and some of them are excess gas from greenhouses like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous gas, emission of gas from the burning of fossil fuels. However, scorching temperature for a long time in the ocean brings Marine heatwaves. For a decade, temperatures have been increasing around the word bringing effects on t species that live in the sea. Ocean warming temperatures affect the coral reef by increasing bleeding frequency. Climate change affects humans economically, socially, and threatening food security, especially in African countries. People get replaced due to the rising of sea levels creating conflicts. I intend to expound more on the significant impact climate change has on species behavior, ecosystem, and sediment-dwelling invertebrates.

Oceans are increasingly warming at a higher rate, worldwide. Ocean heat can be an effective way to measure how the earth is warming because heat trapped in greenhouses goes into the ocean. According to Kevin Trenberth's study, ocean warming causes marine heatwaves that kill fish and coral reefs, fuels hurricanes and coastal downpours, prawns harmful toxin-producing algal brooms and also contributing to heatwave on land. According to (Hobday et al., 2016, 20) defines marine heatwaves when seawater temperatures exceed the seasonally varying threshold, usually the 90th percentile for at least five days consecutive. Marine heatwaves caused by ocean currents that build up in ocean surfaces from the atmosphere, areas with warm water.

Ecosystem structure has been affected by marine heatwaves by changing habitat range of species. (Wernburg et al., 2013,19) fish communities had a much more tropical nature than before after the 2011 marine heatwave in Western Australia and switching from kelp forest to seaweed turfs (Wernburg et al., 2016, 5). Never the less, heatwaves can cause biodiversity by killing the species, thus hindering them to diverse. It can also cause economic loss in aquaculture and fisheries as well as tourism industries by destroying the marine environment through the scientific understanding of these phenomena toward peoples and making thorough awareness scientists can predict future conditions and protect the habitats from harm.

Ocean warming and acidification occur at a global scale worldwide. Forecasting the ecological impact on acidification is a high priority for science, management, and policy (Kristy et al., 2013, 6). Sediment -dwelling invertebrates are highly prone to adjust in warming and acidification in the presence of S.plana due to the clam on their microalga food resources (Van, C. et al., 2020, 4). The study shows that change in climate would require consideration of non-lethal effects like the behavioral change of species. They primarily occur in two ways, which are temperature and carbon dioxide. The ocean warming causes shifts in marine ecosystem composition. Carbon dioxide induces ocean hypercapnia and acidification in the ocean.

However, ocean acidification is a threat to marine species as it acts on lower marine invertebrates with little capacity to compensate for disturbances in extracellular ion and ion base status. (Widdicombe & Spicer, 2008, 10) on experimental marine biology and Ecology, he says oceans have been riveting carbon dioxide at a higher rate for more than 200 years. On a global scale, the absorption will continue altering the seawater carbon chemistry for more years to come. It is a challenge for the scientist in predicting long term implications of ocean acidification for the adversity of marine organism and ecosystem functions. On the contrary, I would like to analyze how each affects sediment-dwelling invertebrates in broadways.

Ocean acidification is an increase in the absorption of carbon dioxide in the ocean as a result of an increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration driving a decline in seawater pH and change in ocean carbonate chemistry (William et al., 2012, 15). Ocean Acidification can affect the organism in two ways that are through reduced pH and increased carbon dioxide (hypercapnia). In the previous researches by (Caldeira & Wickett, 2005, 11), the pH reduces by 0.1 units in the global ocean and is probably supposed to fall further by 0.3 units in 2050 and 0.5 units in 2100. Carbon dioxide is penetrating the sea at a higher rate lowering pH and reducing the natural buffering capacity of the ocean.

Subsequently, different types of marine species differ in their ability to cope and compensate for lowered pH and hypercapnia. Ocean Acidification may affect aquatic organisms and ecosystems directly or indirectly. (Lewis, 2016, 5) ocean acidification, indirectly impacts biota living through bioavailability and potentially toxicity on pH-sensitive metals. However, the ecological effects of the rising of atmospheric carbon dioxide on benthic macrofaunal communities are mostly unknown.

On the other hand, Ocean warming has also affected sediment-dwelling invertebrates in a more significant way. Global warming occurs by the burning of fossil fuel that produces greenhouse carbon dioxide gas threatening to change the global environment adversely. According to the Fifth Assessment Report 2013, reveals that oceans have absorbed more than 93% of excess heat from greenhouse emissions since the 1970s. Rising of ocean temperatures have impacts on marine species and ecosystem by affecting coral bleeding and loss of bleeding for fish and mammals. Coral reefs are also affected by high temperatures lowering their mortality rate.

To understand the effect of heterogeneity on climate forcing and how it functions in the natural community, it necessary to quantify that heterogeneity and how it gets along with other determinants of community structure. The marine ecosystem has been characterized by variability that is caused by climate forcing like internal dynamics and predator-prey interactions and anthropogenic forcing like fishing and. (Halley & Stegiou, 2005, 21) says the variability of global catches has been increasing over time.

Climate forcing, which is caused by an imbalance in radiation on the earth's atmosphere, is classified as natural and anthropogenic (Paulomi & Manoj, 2019, 13). Anthropogenic changes are a result of human activities that alter the properties of the earth system, which include greenhouse gases, aerosols, and land cover changes. Greenhouse gases affect the oceanic ecosystem by a continuous increase in the atmosphere. The anthropogenic changes like population rise, industrialization, and deforestation lead to developmental activities. Anthropogenic forces bring change to the land service and process altering the micro-meteorological parameters, which include albedo, evaporative fraction, surface roughness, and surface fluxes.

The alteration of the land surface may lead to regional and global climate forcing, and these changes at to spatial and temporal heterogeneity in albedo and evaporation fraction. Warmer and drier weather leads some forests to tributes more great treats of wildfire, making it less hospitable for wildlife habitat. Predator-prey interaction is essential in shaping the structure and ecosystem functioning of ecological communities. Humans are interfering with these interactions in many marine systems by removing top predators through harvesting (Myers & Worm, 2003, 25). According to Gil Rilov pp. 262-285, Species that become established in their new environment ate expected somehow to integrate into the food web acting as consumers or as prey.

Natural forcing is also as a result of solar radiation changes and volcanic eruptions. The natural variations that are as a result of natural solar radiation changes and volcanic eruptions are much affected by the climate through surface temperatures, convective potential, hydrological cycle, and the global carbon cycle. The effect of natural changes when temperatures are high, lower convective potential causes more moderate precipitation disrupting the hydrological cycle due to altered land surface process. The carbon cycle disrupted due to excessive emissions, and deforestation causes global warming.

Moreover, climate forcing has played a significant role in the marine environment on how species interact. The impact of climate change and pollution are said to be independent stressors. Options like the mesocosm experimental approach are used to study the interactive effect of climate change and at the community and ecosystem level (Cabrals et al., 2019, 16). Stressors' interactions by their adversity and are likely to happen in the marine coastal environment. Pollution is a synergistic factor that has profoundly affected the coastal ecosystem re. Pollutant components originate from human activities, for example, agricultural and industrial chemicals. According to (Mytilus, G., 2009, 24) the synergistic effects of pollution and increased water temperature pairs the reproduction capacity of marine organisms. (Vinebrook et al., 2004, 18) defines stressors as environmental drivers that harm organism performance when drivers exceed their variation range. Many drivers interact differently bringing synergistic or antagonistic effects to organisms (Kroeker et al., 2013, 24)

Ocean acidification and warning drivers interact, altering the sensitivity of the organism. The effect of temperature on metabolism and carbon dioxide Ocean on the behavior of big predators may influence communities in their pre lives. Predators face an intensifying set of human-induced stressors (Estes et al., 2011, 5; Heithaus et al., 2012, 11). Acidification and ocean warming can trigger species behavior to switch throughout the ecosystem in which they forage (Nagelkerken & Munday, 2016, 17). According to (Cao et al., 2018, 29), the immune response of the Oyster Crassostrea Gigas was affected by a synergistic effect on ocean acidification and cadmium pollution. The impact of climate change and metal pollution brings harmful consequences on marine animals. Under rising temperatures, the toxicity of pollutants increases while the concentration of pollution from agricultural runoff increase and decrease of rainfall.

Climate forcing drivers also affect its ecological system through variable sensitivities, nature of the predator-prey relationship, whether direct or indirect. (Griffith et al. 2012, 7) ecosystem models have been relied upon to measu...