Coral Reef Climate Change

The Coral Reef is referred to as the “Rainforest of the Sea”, it has a greater diversity of animal and plant life than rainforests. The Coral Reef circulates nutrients through the food web and provides food at all of the levels of the food chain and also plays a major role in keeping global temperatures normal and is the primary producer of oxygen. People have relied on the ocean for many years for things like trading and about eighty percent who still live about 100 kilometers from the ocean today rely on it for their lives. People depend on the ocean and how it provides food, tourism, and environmental protection, but surprisingly the world’s poorest people live by and depend on the ocean. The dependency people have on the ocean today is

According to The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Temperature records from as far back as 1850 show that the globe has on average warmed by 0.8 degrees celsius, and further analysis has shown that since the 1970s each decade has been warmer.” (IPPC, 2007). It is expected to keep getting warmer according to IPPC and they also are estimating that the average temperature will be 2.5-4.7 degrees celsius higher in 2100. It has also been found that climate change is due to the greenhouse effect which is also produced from human activity. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased so rapidly since the Industrial Revolution that they are now changing our climate very quickly. High levels are collecting heat that is being reflected from the land and ocean and is making the air and water temperatures warmer because it is preventing it from escaping the Earth’s atmosphere. In order to keep this from happening human activities such as fossil fuel, deforestation and the conversion of land for agricultural use needs to be used

First we need to dissect the meaning of ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is the “reduction in the pH of the ocean over an extended period of time, caused primarily by uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.” (NOAA, 2016). As carbon dioxide increases the ocean pH decreases which it then becomes more acidic. Eventually the structure of the reef will start to dissolve due to the calcium carbonate that the carbon dioxide produces. “Since 1751 the ocean has become 30% more acidic. If nothing is done to help lessen the amount of carbon dioxide emissions into the air ocean acidification will increase producing more damaged or destroyed corals.” (SCOR,