Why oil lobby and Bush fear Ernesto in Gulf of Mexico
The major oil companies and Bush Administration fear Ernesto feeding off the chemical and oil waste in the Keys and Gulf of Mexico.
The Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico have been enriched with massive amount of illegal oil and chemical C02 industrial waste and the water pH and temperatures are very high, the ideal conditions to supercharge Ernesto into a killer storm like Rita and Katrina.
With the world watching, ExxonMobile and other major oil companies are trying via a series of articles in major newspapers and journals to hide behind the nitrogen myth and dead zones, rather than take direct responsibility for their role in super charging the water with C02 chemical and oil waste.
In what appears to be a major public service of good will MSNBC reposted a 2004 article “Do global warming dangers lie under sea- Scientist long to test impact of extra C02 in oceans”. The article details how C02 directly contributes to warmer sea, in particular how C02 affects specific spots under water changing the chemistry (pH).
According to lab research by Yoshihisa Shirayama, a marine biologist at Kyoto University in Japan found that significant change in sea urchin development when C02 was introduced and changed pH levels which incases the temperature of the water, there by super charging passing storms. Chris Field, a Carnegie Institution global ecology researcher at Stanford University, agrees with the pH concern. Ocean chemist Peter Brewer a leading researchers how has led the struggle against the oil lobby to develop simulation modeling of under water C02 hotspots or what is mistaking called dead zones.
According to the MSNBC article, the world oceans have already absorbed 400 billion tons of C02 from fossil fuels and continue to take in 21 million tones a day. The oceans are huge carbon reservoirs, naturally holding an estimated 139,000 billion ton of C02”. No one knows what the global critical mass point is yet.
“The problem is that about 50 present of the 400 billion tons of C02 in the ocean are in the upper 200 meter. Since the average depth is 4,000 meters, we are having a large impact on the shallow surface layers where most marine life is”. In the case of the eastern United States, the oil and chemical C02 waste from the Mississippi River forms a plume that extends as a thermal belt from Texas all the way around Florida to Boston. This C02 thermal belt has made it possible for killer rains storms, heat waves and hurricanes to reach major regions like New York and Boston.
Major US oil and chemical companies dump millions of tons of C02 waste into the rivers, lakes and oceans around North America every year. They are major contributors to the creation of dead zones (under water hotspots) that super charge storms.
The EPA, US Defense Department and Homeland Security departments are stonewalling any information or connection between the ultra hot spots in the the Midwest or catastrophic class hurricane and the Mississippi chemical waters concentrating in the Florida Keys and Northern Caribbean. Both the Defense and CIA have detail scenario detailing mass-migration within the US do to rapid climate change. Whole towns are being toll by FEMA to move 10 miles in land or away from water. The oil and chemical lobbies forced critical documents reclassified and change from an environment probelm to a national security threat.
Because of this official informational blackout and misinformation campaign by the oil lobby and Bush administration, main stream media has refused to report on critical NASA information, studies and active hurricane projects that link the chemical toxins to the heighten Hurricane’s temperature in the eye of the storms. Because of the control critical public accesse of this criticcal information the general public is unable to make the critical connection between the increase intensity storms and CO2 green house effect from the chemical toxins in the water and air of Key West Florida and other chemical hot spot in North America.
Almost all scientists agree there is something up with the Gulf Stream, but differ on the what causeual affect may be. Many scientists are hiding behind oil lobby funded ruse of Worldwide Warning, rather reviewing the local critical mass conditions of the Mississippi River Plume, dead zones and other oil chemical waste dumps in order to understand the micro CO2 crisis situation in the Gulf of Mexico creating the precondition for ultra catastrophic class heat waves and hurricanes attack in the northeastern US.
The recharging and transformtion of Rita is now the case study of the storm potential of CO2 enriched waste feed mirco hot spots and regional super cell dynamics.Storm forecasters are hard pressed to explain the new category of super heat waves and storm beyond just estimating the power of storm based on the Gulf Stream temperature. Gulf people know there is something wrong with the water. Most weathermen are reduced to just stating the facts, because of the oil lobby and Bush Administration information suppression policy.Learned helpless and fear.
The President has refused to allow the NOAA Princeton Group to go public with their new findings for fear of the oil lobby.(see Nubianobserver “Princeton NOAA finding on Man-made C02 and the Killers Heat Wave”)
According to the New York Times—“William Battaglin, hydrologist at the Geological Survey, in Denver, and part of a team tracking the sources of nitrogen in the Mississippi River Basin said "we don't want to point the finger at the farmer unless we're absolutely sure. He's the one that's going to suffer."
Agriculture, researchers are quick to note, is not the only source of nitrogen in the river, which drains 31 states from Montana to New Mexico to New York, including nearly every state between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Sewage treatment waste water, industrial wastes, and atmospheric pollutants all contribute nitrogen to the Mississippi.
Caribbean heating up
According to NOAA, Aug 22, 2006 - Above normal temperatures are continuing throughout much of the Caribbean. While much lower than this time last year, we have bleaching watch status at all of our Index Sites in the Caribbean region except Sombrero Reef in the Florida Keys where a bleaching warning has been issued, and at Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas which has no stress.
NOAA Coral Reef Watch Satellite Bleaching products HotSpot and Degree Heating Week charts) for the Caribbean show that warming is present across most of the region. However, most temperatures are below the bleaching threshold (maximum monthly mean +1 degree C) and most Degree Heating Week accumulation is located off the Gulf Coast of Florida.
NOAA forecasts larger than normal'Dead Zone' for Gulf this summer
BATON ROUGE, LA, July 24, 2006 - A team of scientists from the NOAA Lab real National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University is forecasting that the "Dead Zone" off the coast of Louisiana and Texas this summer will be larger than the average size since 1990.
This NOAA supported modeling effort, led by Eugene Turner, Ph.D., of LSU, predicts this summer's "Dead Zone" will be 6,700 square miles, an area the half the size of the state of Maryland. Since 1990 the average annual hypoxia-affected area has been approximately 4,800 square miles. The forecast is based on nitrate loads from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers in May and incorporates the previous year's load to the system. The U.S. Geological Survey provides the nitrogen data. NOAA funds research cruises to track development of hypoxia.
NOAA FORECASTS LARGER THAN NORMAL "DEAD ZONE" FOR GULF THIS SUMMER
A team of scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, and Louisiana State University is forecasting that the “Dead Zone” off the coast of Louisiana and Texas this summer will be larger than the average size since 1990.
This NOAA supported modeling effort, led by Eugene Turner, Ph.D., of LSU, predicts this summer’s “Dead Zone” will be 6,700 square miles, an area half the size of the state of Maryland. Since 1990 the average annual hypoxia-affected area has been approximately 4,800 square miles. The forecast is based on nitrate loads from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers in May and incorporates the previous year’s load to the system. The nitrogen data are provided by the U.S. Geological Survey. NOAA funds research cruises to track development of hypoxia.
The “Dead Zone” is an area in the Gulf of Mexico where seasonal oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters. It is caused by a seasonal change where algal growth, stimulated by input of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, settles and decays in the bottom waters. The decaying algae consume oxygen faster than it can be replenished from the surface, leading to decreased levels of dissolved oxygen.
There are multiple models of the size of the hypoxic zone that are useful in evaluating the influence of nitrogen load and variations in ocean currents on the size of the “Dead Zone.” These models do not always produce similar results, and model improvement is one focus of ongoing research. Over the past four years, NOAA and its collaborators have compared two independent models. The LSU model is the most accurate model based on past performance, but it is still in the experimental stages.
Additional research for model improvement is required before this annual prediction can become an operational forecast.
"We are anticipating a larger hypoxic zone this summer because the nitrate loading this May, a critical month influencing the size of the area, is higher than last year," said Turner, explaining the NOAA forecast. "The result is that we will have some additional key information about the relative contribution of stratification and nutrient concentrations in different years which should help us better understand the causes behind this annual event."
“This prediction is an example of the ecological forecasting capabilities of NOAA and its partners,” said David Whitall, Ph.D., a NOAA scientist involved in the project. “We believe such forecasts will become important tools for coastal managers in the coming years.”
Research indicates that nearly tripling the nitrogen load into the gulf over the past 50 years has led to the heightened Gulf of Mexico hypoxia problem. The scientists say their research will improve assessments of hypoxic effects under various gulf coast oceanographic conditions.
These research, observational, and modeling studies are part of a larger NOAA sponsored effort to develop a fundamental understanding of the northern Gulf of Mexico ecosystem with a focus on the causes and effects of the hypoxic zone over the Louisiana continental shelf and the prediction of its future extent and impacts to ecologically and commercially important aquatic species.
In 2007 NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, celebrates 200 years of science and service to the nation. Starting with the establishment of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson much of America's scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA. The agency is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners and more than 60 countries to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the as the planet it observes.
Dead Zones as C02 refueling stations for storms
According to the New York Times
“It (dead zone) can stretch for 7,000 square miles off the coast of Louisiana, a vast expanse of ocean devoid of the region's usual rich bounty of fish and shrimp, its bottom littered with the remains of crabs and worms unable to flee its suffocating grasp. This is the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," which last summer reached the size of the state of New Jersey.
Alarmed, the White House recently commissioned six teams of scientists to begin the first large-scale study of the area, hoping for a remission or cure.
The dead zone, researchers say, is emblematic of the growing ills suffered by the planet's seas. Earlier this month, hundreds of scientists, marking 1998 as the international Year of the Ocean, warned that unless action is taken, overfishing, coastal development, and pollution will multiply the kinds of problems that already plague the gulf.
The trouble with the dead zone is that it lacks oxygen, scientists say, apparently because of pollution in the form of excess nutrients flowing into the gulf from the Mississippi River. Animals in this smothering layer of water near the bottom of the sea must flee or perish.
"You can swim and swim and not see any fish," said Dr. Nancy Rabalais, a marine scientist at Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium who has dived in the zone. "Anything that can't move out eventually dies."
While scientists have yet to measure the impact of the zone on fishing yields, fishermen say they already feel its effects as they are forced to travel ever farther to escape the zone's barren limits.
"This is a very serious issue," said Jim Giattina, director of the Gulf of Mexico Program office at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Giattina said the gulf boasts an annual catch of 1.7 billion pounds of fish and shellfish, worth $26 billion. "We've seen what can happen in other places in the world," he said. "We don't want to see a collapse of this fishery."
In fact, researchers say, the problem of rising nutrient loads and accompanying decreases in oxygen, known as hypoxia, is becoming ever more common in the coastal waters of the United States.
"Hypoxia in the gulf is a dramatic case," said Dr. Don Scavia, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal Ocean Program and overseer of the ongoing scientific assessment, "but it's symptomatic of what's happening coastally." More than half of the estuaries in the country experience oxygen depletion during the summer, he said, and a third experience a complete loss of oxygen.
Dr. Rabalais and her team have led the research efforts to date on the dead zone, also known as the hypoxic, or low-oxygen, zone. She and others involved in the new research initiative by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy presented their latest findings in December at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in San Francisco.
The scientists trace the trouble to high levels of nutrients, in particular nitrogen, that flow out of the Mississippi and into the gulf. As in other coastal areas, these rich stores of nutrients feed algal populations, which explode during the summer, producing oxygen, as all plants do. This oxygen stays near the gulf's surface. However, these blooms eventually fall to the ocean floor. When bacteria begin decomposing the dead algae, they deplete the oxygen from the ocean bottom, sometimes to the point where none is left.
At the same time, the lighter fresh water flowing in from the river forms a discrete layer on top of the heavier, salty gulf waters, keeping oxygen in the air from reaching and refreshing the hypoxic zone near the bottom of the sea.
Among the most compelling pieces of evidence are the maps researchers have made since 1985 of the hypoxic zone. Scientists measure the zone each summer, when it reaches its peak. Dr. Rabalais carries out the work along with her colleague and husband Dr. R. Eugene Turner, who is director of the Coastal Ecology Institute at Louisiana State University and who discovered the zone in 1974.
In 1993, the team witnessed a grand natural experiment as the American Midwest was deluged and the Mississippi flooded, pouring huge amounts of nutrient-rich runoff from waterlogged cities and agricultural lands into the gulf. That summer the hypoxic zone doubled in size.
In contrast, 1988 was the year of a great drought in the Midwest, Turner said, and "the hypoxic zone was almost absent," adding: "That clearly shows the influence of the river is dominant."
The team of researchers has gathered corroborative evidence from mud cores taken from the seabed of the hypoxic zone, studying algal and animal remains in the cores that are dated using radioisotopes. From these Turner and colleagues have been able to infer the relative levels of algae and oxygen in the gulf for the past 200 years. They found an increase in the amount of algae deposited, as well as a decrease in the animals that require high levels of oxygen and an increase in those that can tolerate low levels, such as microscopic, one-celled creatures known as foraminifera.
The timing of the changes, said Turner, matches well the times of known increases in nutrients in the river, with levels lowest early in the century and striking increases since the 1950s.
The timing also matches large increases in fertilizer use, suggesting farming as a key source of nitrogen in the river. In addition, a U.S. Geological Survey study estimated that more than half of the nitrogen reaching the gulf appears to come from agricultural sources.
But farm fertilizers are not the only likely culprit. A report released in December by the Senate Agriculture Committee estimated that 1.37 billion tons of manure was produced by livestock in the United States last year alone, much of it making its way to the sea.
Despite the evidence, scientists remain reluctant to blame the dead zone entirely on farmers.
"We're all fairly convinced that it's going to be agriculture that's going to have to kick in and change to some degree to make a big difference," said William Battaglin, hydrologist at the Geological Survey, in Denver, and part of a team tracking the sources of nitrogen in the Mississippi River Basin. "But we don't want to point the finger at the farmer unless we're absolutely sure. He's the one that's going to suffer."
Agriculture, researchers are quick to note, is not the only source of nitrogen in the river, which drains 31 states from Montana to New Mexico to New York, including nearly every state between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Sewage treatment waste water, industrial wastes, and atmospheric pollutants all contribute nitrogen to the Mississippi.
At the same time, difficult questions remain.
Despite the significantly decreased flow of the Mississippi since the great flood of 1993, the dead zone has grown to essentially the same size every summer. But Dr. Rabalais says there may be explanations for that. Theoretical models predicted a large dead zone in 1994, the first year after the flood, and every year since then the gulf has been hit with either floodwaters or pulses of water from the river at just the right time to boost growth of the algae, making it impossible to say with absolute certainty that the flood of 1993 caused the explosive growth of dead zone.
"I haven't had a normal year since 1994," Dr. Rabalais said. "The gulf is an uncontrolled experiment."
In addition, researchers say that while the growth of algae and the hypoxic zone appear to be controlled largely by nitrogen, complicating roles are now known to be played by silica from rocks and phosphorus from municipal waste waters and fertilizers. But their influence remains less well understood.
Another risk with increasing nutrient loads is an increase in harmful algal blooms, like those seen with Pfisteria and Pseudo-nitzschia, the algae causing amnesic shellfish poisoning, an illness that can result in permanent memory loss. Dr. Quay Dortch, an oceanographer at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, said she has already found blooms of toxic Pseudo-nitzschia in the gulf.
"These are the highest concentrations of this organism registered anywhere," Dr. Dortch said of the Pseudo-nitzschia found in the plume of the Mississippi. She said they reach their peak when the river's flow into the gulf peaks. To her surprise, there has been no documented harm so far to humans from these blooms, leaving Pseudo-nitzschia in the gulf "a potential threat."
Though researchers agree that cutting the levels of nutrients in the river is the way to tame the hypoxic zone, the best method to do so remains unclear.
For example, Scavia said, though much of the nitrogen appears to be coming from the middle Mississippi, a region including Illinois and parts of Iowa, that region may not be the best one to try to control first. "It's pretty far from the gulf," he said. "It may be more appropriate and feasible to control lesser loads in other places."
Until researchers know more, Scavia and others say they are working to find changes that benefit farmers and the gulf. For example, Giattina said, farmers could turn riverside land into wetland reserves, receiving compensation at the same time that they create a buffer that reduces the nutrient load draining out of the area. Such federal and state programs to protect riverside land are now being considered in a number of areas that have water quality problems linked to agriculture.
In the meantime, each summer brings on a new dead zone that blots out vast stretches of ocean, driving away fish, shrimp, and the people searching for them.
Cynthia Sarthou, campaign director for the Gulf Restoration Network, in New Orleans, said: "If there was a dead zone 6 to 7,000 square miles in the middle of Iowa, people would sit up and take notice. This is a problem that needs to be solved."
The Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico have been enriched with massive amount of illegal oil and chemical C02 industrial waste and the water pH and temperatures are very high, the ideal conditions to supercharge Ernesto into a killer storm like Rita and Katrina.
With the world watching, ExxonMobile and other major oil companies are trying via a series of articles in major newspapers and journals to hide behind the nitrogen myth and dead zones, rather than take direct responsibility for their role in super charging the water with C02 chemical and oil waste.
In what appears to be a major public service of good will MSNBC reposted a 2004 article “Do global warming dangers lie under sea- Scientist long to test impact of extra C02 in oceans”. The article details how C02 directly contributes to warmer sea, in particular how C02 affects specific spots under water changing the chemistry (pH).
According to lab research by Yoshihisa Shirayama, a marine biologist at Kyoto University in Japan found that significant change in sea urchin development when C02 was introduced and changed pH levels which incases the temperature of the water, there by super charging passing storms. Chris Field, a Carnegie Institution global ecology researcher at Stanford University, agrees with the pH concern. Ocean chemist Peter Brewer a leading researchers how has led the struggle against the oil lobby to develop simulation modeling of under water C02 hotspots or what is mistaking called dead zones.
According to the MSNBC article, the world oceans have already absorbed 400 billion tons of C02 from fossil fuels and continue to take in 21 million tones a day. The oceans are huge carbon reservoirs, naturally holding an estimated 139,000 billion ton of C02”. No one knows what the global critical mass point is yet.
“The problem is that about 50 present of the 400 billion tons of C02 in the ocean are in the upper 200 meter. Since the average depth is 4,000 meters, we are having a large impact on the shallow surface layers where most marine life is”. In the case of the eastern United States, the oil and chemical C02 waste from the Mississippi River forms a plume that extends as a thermal belt from Texas all the way around Florida to Boston. This C02 thermal belt has made it possible for killer rains storms, heat waves and hurricanes to reach major regions like New York and Boston.
Major US oil and chemical companies dump millions of tons of C02 waste into the rivers, lakes and oceans around North America every year. They are major contributors to the creation of dead zones (under water hotspots) that super charge storms.
The EPA, US Defense Department and Homeland Security departments are stonewalling any information or connection between the ultra hot spots in the the Midwest or catastrophic class hurricane and the Mississippi chemical waters concentrating in the Florida Keys and Northern Caribbean. Both the Defense and CIA have detail scenario detailing mass-migration within the US do to rapid climate change. Whole towns are being toll by FEMA to move 10 miles in land or away from water. The oil and chemical lobbies forced critical documents reclassified and change from an environment probelm to a national security threat.
Because of this official informational blackout and misinformation campaign by the oil lobby and Bush administration, main stream media has refused to report on critical NASA information, studies and active hurricane projects that link the chemical toxins to the heighten Hurricane’s temperature in the eye of the storms. Because of the control critical public accesse of this criticcal information the general public is unable to make the critical connection between the increase intensity storms and CO2 green house effect from the chemical toxins in the water and air of Key West Florida and other chemical hot spot in North America.
Almost all scientists agree there is something up with the Gulf Stream, but differ on the what causeual affect may be. Many scientists are hiding behind oil lobby funded ruse of Worldwide Warning, rather reviewing the local critical mass conditions of the Mississippi River Plume, dead zones and other oil chemical waste dumps in order to understand the micro CO2 crisis situation in the Gulf of Mexico creating the precondition for ultra catastrophic class heat waves and hurricanes attack in the northeastern US.
The recharging and transformtion of Rita is now the case study of the storm potential of CO2 enriched waste feed mirco hot spots and regional super cell dynamics.Storm forecasters are hard pressed to explain the new category of super heat waves and storm beyond just estimating the power of storm based on the Gulf Stream temperature. Gulf people know there is something wrong with the water. Most weathermen are reduced to just stating the facts, because of the oil lobby and Bush Administration information suppression policy.Learned helpless and fear.
The President has refused to allow the NOAA Princeton Group to go public with their new findings for fear of the oil lobby.(see Nubianobserver “Princeton NOAA finding on Man-made C02 and the Killers Heat Wave”)
According to the New York Times—“William Battaglin, hydrologist at the Geological Survey, in Denver, and part of a team tracking the sources of nitrogen in the Mississippi River Basin said "we don't want to point the finger at the farmer unless we're absolutely sure. He's the one that's going to suffer."
Agriculture, researchers are quick to note, is not the only source of nitrogen in the river, which drains 31 states from Montana to New Mexico to New York, including nearly every state between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Sewage treatment waste water, industrial wastes, and atmospheric pollutants all contribute nitrogen to the Mississippi.
Caribbean heating up
According to NOAA, Aug 22, 2006 - Above normal temperatures are continuing throughout much of the Caribbean. While much lower than this time last year, we have bleaching watch status at all of our Index Sites in the Caribbean region except Sombrero Reef in the Florida Keys where a bleaching warning has been issued, and at Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas which has no stress.
NOAA Coral Reef Watch Satellite Bleaching products HotSpot and Degree Heating Week charts) for the Caribbean show that warming is present across most of the region. However, most temperatures are below the bleaching threshold (maximum monthly mean +1 degree C) and most Degree Heating Week accumulation is located off the Gulf Coast of Florida.
NOAA forecasts larger than normal'Dead Zone' for Gulf this summer
BATON ROUGE, LA, July 24, 2006 - A team of scientists from the NOAA Lab real National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University is forecasting that the "Dead Zone" off the coast of Louisiana and Texas this summer will be larger than the average size since 1990.
This NOAA supported modeling effort, led by Eugene Turner, Ph.D., of LSU, predicts this summer's "Dead Zone" will be 6,700 square miles, an area the half the size of the state of Maryland. Since 1990 the average annual hypoxia-affected area has been approximately 4,800 square miles. The forecast is based on nitrate loads from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers in May and incorporates the previous year's load to the system. The U.S. Geological Survey provides the nitrogen data. NOAA funds research cruises to track development of hypoxia.
NOAA FORECASTS LARGER THAN NORMAL "DEAD ZONE" FOR GULF THIS SUMMER
A team of scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, and Louisiana State University is forecasting that the “Dead Zone” off the coast of Louisiana and Texas this summer will be larger than the average size since 1990.
This NOAA supported modeling effort, led by Eugene Turner, Ph.D., of LSU, predicts this summer’s “Dead Zone” will be 6,700 square miles, an area half the size of the state of Maryland. Since 1990 the average annual hypoxia-affected area has been approximately 4,800 square miles. The forecast is based on nitrate loads from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers in May and incorporates the previous year’s load to the system. The nitrogen data are provided by the U.S. Geological Survey. NOAA funds research cruises to track development of hypoxia.
The “Dead Zone” is an area in the Gulf of Mexico where seasonal oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters. It is caused by a seasonal change where algal growth, stimulated by input of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, settles and decays in the bottom waters. The decaying algae consume oxygen faster than it can be replenished from the surface, leading to decreased levels of dissolved oxygen.
There are multiple models of the size of the hypoxic zone that are useful in evaluating the influence of nitrogen load and variations in ocean currents on the size of the “Dead Zone.” These models do not always produce similar results, and model improvement is one focus of ongoing research. Over the past four years, NOAA and its collaborators have compared two independent models. The LSU model is the most accurate model based on past performance, but it is still in the experimental stages.
Additional research for model improvement is required before this annual prediction can become an operational forecast.
"We are anticipating a larger hypoxic zone this summer because the nitrate loading this May, a critical month influencing the size of the area, is higher than last year," said Turner, explaining the NOAA forecast. "The result is that we will have some additional key information about the relative contribution of stratification and nutrient concentrations in different years which should help us better understand the causes behind this annual event."
“This prediction is an example of the ecological forecasting capabilities of NOAA and its partners,” said David Whitall, Ph.D., a NOAA scientist involved in the project. “We believe such forecasts will become important tools for coastal managers in the coming years.”
Research indicates that nearly tripling the nitrogen load into the gulf over the past 50 years has led to the heightened Gulf of Mexico hypoxia problem. The scientists say their research will improve assessments of hypoxic effects under various gulf coast oceanographic conditions.
These research, observational, and modeling studies are part of a larger NOAA sponsored effort to develop a fundamental understanding of the northern Gulf of Mexico ecosystem with a focus on the causes and effects of the hypoxic zone over the Louisiana continental shelf and the prediction of its future extent and impacts to ecologically and commercially important aquatic species.
In 2007 NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, celebrates 200 years of science and service to the nation. Starting with the establishment of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson much of America's scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA. The agency is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners and more than 60 countries to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the as the planet it observes.
Dead Zones as C02 refueling stations for storms
According to the New York Times
“It (dead zone) can stretch for 7,000 square miles off the coast of Louisiana, a vast expanse of ocean devoid of the region's usual rich bounty of fish and shrimp, its bottom littered with the remains of crabs and worms unable to flee its suffocating grasp. This is the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," which last summer reached the size of the state of New Jersey.
Alarmed, the White House recently commissioned six teams of scientists to begin the first large-scale study of the area, hoping for a remission or cure.
The dead zone, researchers say, is emblematic of the growing ills suffered by the planet's seas. Earlier this month, hundreds of scientists, marking 1998 as the international Year of the Ocean, warned that unless action is taken, overfishing, coastal development, and pollution will multiply the kinds of problems that already plague the gulf.
The trouble with the dead zone is that it lacks oxygen, scientists say, apparently because of pollution in the form of excess nutrients flowing into the gulf from the Mississippi River. Animals in this smothering layer of water near the bottom of the sea must flee or perish.
"You can swim and swim and not see any fish," said Dr. Nancy Rabalais, a marine scientist at Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium who has dived in the zone. "Anything that can't move out eventually dies."
While scientists have yet to measure the impact of the zone on fishing yields, fishermen say they already feel its effects as they are forced to travel ever farther to escape the zone's barren limits.
"This is a very serious issue," said Jim Giattina, director of the Gulf of Mexico Program office at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Giattina said the gulf boasts an annual catch of 1.7 billion pounds of fish and shellfish, worth $26 billion. "We've seen what can happen in other places in the world," he said. "We don't want to see a collapse of this fishery."
In fact, researchers say, the problem of rising nutrient loads and accompanying decreases in oxygen, known as hypoxia, is becoming ever more common in the coastal waters of the United States.
"Hypoxia in the gulf is a dramatic case," said Dr. Don Scavia, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal Ocean Program and overseer of the ongoing scientific assessment, "but it's symptomatic of what's happening coastally." More than half of the estuaries in the country experience oxygen depletion during the summer, he said, and a third experience a complete loss of oxygen.
Dr. Rabalais and her team have led the research efforts to date on the dead zone, also known as the hypoxic, or low-oxygen, zone. She and others involved in the new research initiative by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy presented their latest findings in December at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in San Francisco.
The scientists trace the trouble to high levels of nutrients, in particular nitrogen, that flow out of the Mississippi and into the gulf. As in other coastal areas, these rich stores of nutrients feed algal populations, which explode during the summer, producing oxygen, as all plants do. This oxygen stays near the gulf's surface. However, these blooms eventually fall to the ocean floor. When bacteria begin decomposing the dead algae, they deplete the oxygen from the ocean bottom, sometimes to the point where none is left.
At the same time, the lighter fresh water flowing in from the river forms a discrete layer on top of the heavier, salty gulf waters, keeping oxygen in the air from reaching and refreshing the hypoxic zone near the bottom of the sea.
Among the most compelling pieces of evidence are the maps researchers have made since 1985 of the hypoxic zone. Scientists measure the zone each summer, when it reaches its peak. Dr. Rabalais carries out the work along with her colleague and husband Dr. R. Eugene Turner, who is director of the Coastal Ecology Institute at Louisiana State University and who discovered the zone in 1974.
In 1993, the team witnessed a grand natural experiment as the American Midwest was deluged and the Mississippi flooded, pouring huge amounts of nutrient-rich runoff from waterlogged cities and agricultural lands into the gulf. That summer the hypoxic zone doubled in size.
In contrast, 1988 was the year of a great drought in the Midwest, Turner said, and "the hypoxic zone was almost absent," adding: "That clearly shows the influence of the river is dominant."
The team of researchers has gathered corroborative evidence from mud cores taken from the seabed of the hypoxic zone, studying algal and animal remains in the cores that are dated using radioisotopes. From these Turner and colleagues have been able to infer the relative levels of algae and oxygen in the gulf for the past 200 years. They found an increase in the amount of algae deposited, as well as a decrease in the animals that require high levels of oxygen and an increase in those that can tolerate low levels, such as microscopic, one-celled creatures known as foraminifera.
The timing of the changes, said Turner, matches well the times of known increases in nutrients in the river, with levels lowest early in the century and striking increases since the 1950s.
The timing also matches large increases in fertilizer use, suggesting farming as a key source of nitrogen in the river. In addition, a U.S. Geological Survey study estimated that more than half of the nitrogen reaching the gulf appears to come from agricultural sources.
But farm fertilizers are not the only likely culprit. A report released in December by the Senate Agriculture Committee estimated that 1.37 billion tons of manure was produced by livestock in the United States last year alone, much of it making its way to the sea.
Despite the evidence, scientists remain reluctant to blame the dead zone entirely on farmers.
"We're all fairly convinced that it's going to be agriculture that's going to have to kick in and change to some degree to make a big difference," said William Battaglin, hydrologist at the Geological Survey, in Denver, and part of a team tracking the sources of nitrogen in the Mississippi River Basin. "But we don't want to point the finger at the farmer unless we're absolutely sure. He's the one that's going to suffer."
Agriculture, researchers are quick to note, is not the only source of nitrogen in the river, which drains 31 states from Montana to New Mexico to New York, including nearly every state between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Sewage treatment waste water, industrial wastes, and atmospheric pollutants all contribute nitrogen to the Mississippi.
At the same time, difficult questions remain.
Despite the significantly decreased flow of the Mississippi since the great flood of 1993, the dead zone has grown to essentially the same size every summer. But Dr. Rabalais says there may be explanations for that. Theoretical models predicted a large dead zone in 1994, the first year after the flood, and every year since then the gulf has been hit with either floodwaters or pulses of water from the river at just the right time to boost growth of the algae, making it impossible to say with absolute certainty that the flood of 1993 caused the explosive growth of dead zone.
"I haven't had a normal year since 1994," Dr. Rabalais said. "The gulf is an uncontrolled experiment."
In addition, researchers say that while the growth of algae and the hypoxic zone appear to be controlled largely by nitrogen, complicating roles are now known to be played by silica from rocks and phosphorus from municipal waste waters and fertilizers. But their influence remains less well understood.
Another risk with increasing nutrient loads is an increase in harmful algal blooms, like those seen with Pfisteria and Pseudo-nitzschia, the algae causing amnesic shellfish poisoning, an illness that can result in permanent memory loss. Dr. Quay Dortch, an oceanographer at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, said she has already found blooms of toxic Pseudo-nitzschia in the gulf.
"These are the highest concentrations of this organism registered anywhere," Dr. Dortch said of the Pseudo-nitzschia found in the plume of the Mississippi. She said they reach their peak when the river's flow into the gulf peaks. To her surprise, there has been no documented harm so far to humans from these blooms, leaving Pseudo-nitzschia in the gulf "a potential threat."
Though researchers agree that cutting the levels of nutrients in the river is the way to tame the hypoxic zone, the best method to do so remains unclear.
For example, Scavia said, though much of the nitrogen appears to be coming from the middle Mississippi, a region including Illinois and parts of Iowa, that region may not be the best one to try to control first. "It's pretty far from the gulf," he said. "It may be more appropriate and feasible to control lesser loads in other places."
Until researchers know more, Scavia and others say they are working to find changes that benefit farmers and the gulf. For example, Giattina said, farmers could turn riverside land into wetland reserves, receiving compensation at the same time that they create a buffer that reduces the nutrient load draining out of the area. Such federal and state programs to protect riverside land are now being considered in a number of areas that have water quality problems linked to agriculture.
In the meantime, each summer brings on a new dead zone that blots out vast stretches of ocean, driving away fish, shrimp, and the people searching for them.
Cynthia Sarthou, campaign director for the Gulf Restoration Network, in New Orleans, said: "If there was a dead zone 6 to 7,000 square miles in the middle of Iowa, people would sit up and take notice. This is a problem that needs to be solved."
posted by Nubianobserver at 12:35 PM
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