Tag: environment

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Climate-related changes are affecting the nation’s valuable living marine resources and the people, businesses and communities that depend on them. From warming oceans and rising seas, to droughts and ocean acidification, these impacts are expected to increase with continued changes in the planet’s climate system.

Marine and coastal fisheries generate approximately $200 billion in sales and support 1.7 million jobs in the U.S. each year. Coastal habitats help defend coastal communities from storms and inundation, and provide the foundation for tourism and recreation-based economies in many coastal communities.

Source: NMFS Climate Science Strategy

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From Prozac to caffeine to cholesterol medicine, from ibuprofen to bug spray, researchers found an alphabet soup of drugs and other personal-care products in sewage-treatment wastewater and in the tissue of juvenile chinook in Puget Sound.

Source: Cocaine, Prozac, other drugs found in Puget Sound salmon from tainted wastewater | The Seattle Times

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NOEP_National_Report_2016

New data on the economic health of the ocean and coastal economies suggest that future growth will largely take place in the narrow band of coastal lands threatened by climate change and sea level rise. The forecast is contained in the latest report from the National Ocean Economic Program (NOEP), a unit of the Center for the Blue Economy (CBE) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA.

Source: Center for the Blue Economy – 2016 NOEP Report

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Earlier this month, meteorologist blogger Cliff Mass announced the death of the “blob” in the northeast Pacific Ocean.

The “blob” refers to the large area of very warm waters that helped set up a bulging area of high pressure over Alaska, around which the jet stream flowed, directing impressive cold over the U.S. for the past two winters and blocking storms from hitting the West Coast.

Source: The Pacific ‘blob’ loses. El Niño wins. What comes next? – The Washington Post

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The funds, which will be distributed over the next two-three years, will support seven new projects designed to increase our understanding of how climate change can affect fish stocks, fisheries, and the communities that depend on them for their livelihood.

“Warmer coastal and ocean waters and ocean acidification are already affecting our nation’s fisheries,” said NOAA Fisheries chief science advisor Richard Merrick, Ph.D. “NOAA is working to ensure the resilience of healthy, productive fisheries that are essential to U.S. coastal communities. Sustainable fisheries create jobs, stabilize coastal economies, enhance commerce, and help to meet the growing demand for seafood.”

Source: NOAA awards funding for research projects to study climate impacts on fish and fisheries | NOAA Fisheries