Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460
- 474)
WEDNESDAY 4 JULY 2007
PROFESSOR ALAN
RODGER, PROFESSOR
GRAHAM SHIMMIELD,
PROFESSOR BOB
DICKSON AND
PROFESSOR ANDREW
WATSON
Q460 Dr Iddon: These are all questions
for you, Professor Watson, because you came to give evidence on
carbon dioxide and acidification this morning. What do you think
we ought to be doing across the world to improve our knowledge
of absorption of carbon dioxide and its effects?
Professor Watson: We need to properly
understand how much carbon dioxide is going into the oceans. There
is a canonical figure that has been around for literally decades.
With new research—some of it just published jointly between
the British Antarctic Survey and the University of East Anglia
two weeks ago—we now realise that the Southern Ocean, for
example, is changing quite rapidly the rate at which it takes
up carbon dioxide. We have new research in the North Atlantic
suggesting that the North Atlantic also is changing very rapidly.
So largely in ignorance we thought that oceans took up carbon
dioxide at a uniform rate year on year and we now realise that
that is not the case. We need to put in place—this is globally—an
observing system that will tell us how rapidly CO2 is being taken
up by the oceans. In some places that is in place. In the North
Atlantic it is being done using commercial ships of opportunity
and this is funded by the European Union at the moment under Framework
VI as a demonstration project and it has worked extremely well.
We can see that we can do this using commercial ships of opportunity.
It is difficult and it would be very helpful if the shipping companies
had some slight incentive to help us because at the moment they
will move their ships at a moment's notice, and this can be quite
annoying if you have spent six months putting instrumentation
in and then the ship goes off to the other side of the world.
So there is something there which governments, I think, could
do. If they got one per cent off their port duties for example
for helping scientists that would be useful. But we do need to
put in place a global observing system and that will involve satellites,
in situ observations, the co-ordination of the different methodologies,
and computing too. The UK has begun to do that. We have projects
that are going in that direction. The NERC has a centre which
does that for example. However, we have to expand this to the
global ocean and quite quickly. In general, there has been little
support again from the UK to do this kind of work. It has been
done (insofar as it has been done) through Europe which co-ordinates
some of the other European countries, but they are only funding
a demonstration project so this will stop in a year or so.
Q461 Dr Iddon: There are about 3,000
Argo floats in the sea now. Have we missed a trick? Could we have
adapted those to give you the data that you require?
Professor Watson: It would be
lovely if one could put a carbon dioxide sensor on the Argo floats
and get the carbon dioxide information. Unfortunately, we cannot
do that, the technology is not there, when the float goes down
the sensor falls to pieces, but you can put oxygen sensors on
such floats and that would be extremely useful to knowing how
the biological system is working.
Q462 Dr Iddon: Briefly, which instrumental
techniques are you relying on?
Professor Watson: We are relying
on these commercial ships of opportunity with CO2 instrumentation
that were originally developed by Plymouth Marine Laboratory and
Defra and are now being used worldwide. We are relying on satellites
to get measurements of ocean colour and temperature, et cetera,
and we try to integrate that with computing.
Q463 Dr Iddon: Obviously normal partition
will occur between the air and sea and carbon dioxide and the
other gases, but are there other major features like sea churn,
currents, temperatures that affect the levels of uptake in specific
areas?
Professor Watson: Absolutely.
The temperature affects carbon dioxide uptake very dramatically
so if the temperature of the oceans begins to increase the rate
of uptake decreases. The overturning circulation, so the rate
of mixing basically, of the ocean also affects this, and finally
the biology of the oceans is very important in this. We can monitor
all of those things, for example biology can be monitored from
space and the temperature can be monitored to a certain extent
from space. Mixing is a little more difficult but by using high-resolution
models and the Argo floats we can get some information on that.
Q464 Dr Iddon: Do we know if there
are huge variations between the surface and the bottom of the
deepest oceans? What kind of distribution of carbon dioxide occurs?
Professor Watson: There is a distribution
that is in general terms understood, but there is more carbon
dioxide at the bottom of the oceans for example because biological
fluxes take it down—it is called the biological pump—to
the bottom, so in general terms that distribution is understood
but near the surface it can change rapidly and that of course
is the bit that is of interest for uptake over, let us say, shortish
timescales of a decade or even 100 years. The deep ocean turns
over so slowly that it is less significant.
Q465 Dr Iddon: Briefly, what would
be the main effects of increasing acidification if we had another
100 years of uptake at the rate of the past 200 years where more
than half the CO2 emitted has been absorbed?
Professor Watson: Many organisms
do not seem to function so well as the acidity of the oceans increases.
Those are particularly organisms that calcify, that is to say
they produce calcium carbonate, and a huge range of marine organisms
do that. They find it more difficult to do it as the CO2 increases.
Those organisms include corals for example, which are already
under stress caused by rising temperatures. They include also
plankton which are so numerous that they form much of the rocks
on which this city is built for example and which are therefore
important just because of the sheer fluxes that they produce.
We know from experiments in labs for example that these organisms
can find it difficult to calcify if you increase the carbon dioxide
concentration. What we do not know is whether we can extrapolate
those experiments to the real ocean to a relatively slow increase
taking 100 years, although they may adapt and may have no trouble
but we suspect not, so a lot of the marine biologists are quite
concerned about the long-term effects of acidification and little
is known.
Q466 Dr Iddon: Apart from stopping
producing as much CO2 by burning fossils fuels, which we are attempting
to do worldwide, are there any other ways we can mitigate the
effects of acidification?
Professor Watson: Locally, for
example around the coral reef if the coral reef is having problems
with the acidification, you might add calcium carbonate or magnesium
carbonate to the area and that would probably help the organisms.
However, for the seas as a whole, for the open ocean, well, people
have discussed geo-engineering type scenarios where you grind
up vast quantities of calcium carbonate rock and throw it into
the ocean, but you would have to grind up about the area of Sussex
every year in order to have any real effect. We are putting so
much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that I think most people
who look at this think it is just not practical.
Q467 Dr Spink: This is obviously
a double-edged sword. Is the international community confident
about the level of ocean CO2 absorption that would be optimum
for the health of the planet overall, not that we can, as you
have just explained, do much about it other than stop burning
fossil fuels? Are we confident about the optimum level?
Professor Watson: If you ask about
the optimum level of C02 absorption you have to balance two things.
If you leave the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then it builds
up more quickly and you get quicker climate change. If it goes
into the oceans you get these effects of acidification. I do not
think there is any consensus about what the optimum level is other
than most scientists in this area would strongly support decarbonising
industrial economies as quickly as possible.
Q468 Dr Spink: So that is the bottom
line?
Professor Watson: That is the
bottom line.
Q469 Dr Harris: I know you have touched
on this already but I want to ask about the balance between Antarctic
and Arctic work in pure terms of poles. Do you all accept that
there is a need to improve, comparatively speaking, the amount
of work and resource going into the Arctic as opposed to the Antarctic
and, if so, how would you do it? What are the mechanisms for increasing
the funding and capability in the Arctic?
Professor Rodger: There is a fair
amount of resource already going into the Arctic. What you do
not see effectively is that resource as a coherent body such as
you do have through the British Antarctic Survey going to the
other pole. We have already heard about a significant number of
EU activities that are going on where the UK is playing a leadership
role, so it is not as much a question necessarily of resource
but being more integrated to some extent which I think is a much
more important activity. I will leave my Arctic colleagues to
say some more.
Professor Dickson: The IPY coming
up has given us a huge impetus to add more and more co-ordinated
work in the Arctic and from the submitted 1,500 or so expressions
of interest something called the Integrated Arctic Ocean Observing
System, the science plan for which I have got here, was thought
up and designed specifically for the IPY. The reason for doing
such a thing is because a pan-Arctic effort like this is not only
possible but it is larger than any national funding agency would
aspire to, so this had to be done before the announcements of
opportunity were made by, for example, NSF, the Research Council
of Norway, and NERC, so that was done. There is going to be on
a scale that we have not had before an integrated Arctic Ocean
observing system for the IPY of which the big European effort
Damocles will be the European half, so I would say that although
we by no means have covered all the bases in the Arctic it is
becoming much better co-ordinated, and the IPY has given us the
incentive to do that.
Professor Shimmield: I entirely
agree with Bob and, as I said in an earlier remark, we are moving
strongly forward on the biological and chemical aspects of the
Arctic work as well. I think that is also done both in collaboration
across the UK university network but also very strongly with the
Scandinavian effort and Norwegian effort. I should say that is
permeating right through into the education sector as well. There
are now joint education programmes for the universities in the
Arctic and UK universities and the University of Svalbard, which
is an international organisation for training both at undergraduate
and postgraduate level, so we are seeing, I would say, in the
last five years a dramatic shift in the way in which Arctic research
and Arctic marine research is being carried out.
Q470 Dr Harris: Do either of your
colleagues working in the frozen north look jealously on the resources
and reputation of the BAS? There must be pangs at least?
Professor Shimmield: Yes clearly
there are. Some of the infrastructure that is available to deliver
the effort in the southern hemisphere is only available at a modest
level in the north.
Q471 Dr Harris: So it is not all
about co-ordination, there is a resource issue?
Professor Shimmield: For instance,
as you have heard in previous discussions, the availability of
full icebreaking vessels in the high north to conduct marine research,
and that would clearly need to be done, I think, at a European
co-ordination level now.
Q472 Dr Harris: You are not looking
bashful at all, Professor Rodger?
Professor Rodger: Only that the
James Clark Ross, which is one of the best ships that NERC
owns, for doing marine research, has 60 days allocated to doing
other things other than looking south and some of that is spent
in the north, but it is not an icebreaker and it can only deal
with one to one and a half metres' thickness of ice.
Q473 Chris Mole: I think everybody
knows about the rainforest. Are people really aware of the role
of the seas and the oceans in climate change? Do you need to do
more to engage with the public to understand acidification? They
might know a bit about the thermal haline pump and all of that
but should you be doing more?
Professor Rodger: Yes. Let me
just say that one of the ways to engage is the education side,
but always to inspire youngsters you want something unusual and
out of the way and I would have suggested that the deep sea with
all its peculiar animals is one way to inspire, so instead of
necessary looking at dinosaurs I would really like to see this
generation of youngsters focus on the fantastic biodiversity that
you get within the ocean and particularly the deep ocean.
Q474 Chris Mole: Anybody else?
Professor Watson: I would have
to say that the British Antarctic Survey is one of the best at
doing outreach. In general, I would absolutely agree. I think
that we do not do enough outreach. Again it is rather a question
of funding and time. There are many calls on one's time and it
tends to be that is relatively far down the list because there
is not enough time. It would be helpful if for example the NERC
did more centrally to co-ordinate with the various things that
they are funding. That would be helpful from a university point
of view where we generally do not have the resources to do that.
Chairman: On that note I am going to
bring this session neatly to an end and to thank Professor alan
Rodger, Professor Graham Shimmield, Professor Bob Dickson and
Professor Andrew Watson for their time this morning. Thank you
very much indeed.
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