here's a slightly sobering piece of information for you from our friends at the UK Met Office
it's their CO2 forecast from the Mauna Loa Climate Observatory in Hawaii which has been
monitoring carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere since 1958 they forecast the 2020 annual average
CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa to be 414.2 plus or minus 9.6 parts per million in 2020
for the first time they say monthly CO2 levels will exceed four hundred and fifteen parts per
million during spring and summer and will remain above four hundred and ten parts per million
for the entire year they tell us this year's annual rise will be relatively large due to a
continuation of the temporary weakening of the land carbon sink caused by climate variability
this accelerates this year's annual CO2 rise by about 10% with between 1% and 2% due to the
2019-20 Australian bushfires but we know our planet's not just made up of land and air more
than 70 percent of it is covered by the water in our oceans and those oceans are the biggest
carbon sink that we've got modern technological advances like satellite tracking are helping
our scientists get a clearer picture of how our oceans are absorbing a very significant
proportion of the extra carbon dioxide we humans are emitting into our atmosphere and
we're also now starting to really understand some of the more disastrous consequences of
that extra CO2 absorption consequences like ocean acidification which among other things
is adversely affecting the long-term viability of shellfish and coral reefs that human activity
and climate change are not just altering the composition and temperature of our open oceans
they're also beginning to threaten ecosystems along our coastlines and that could have the
consequence of releasing huge quantities of what our scientists refer to as blue carbon
hello and welcome to just have a think the scale of Earth's seas and oceans is pretty
mind-boggling isn't it as well as covering almost three-quarters of the planet they
produce 50 percent of the world's oxygen and absorb 90% of the excess heat accumulated in
our planet's climate system and according to this report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change or IPCC they also take up about 1/3 of all the carbon emitted as a direct result of
human activity and although that carbon uptake is slowing the rate of increase in the warming of our
atmosphere it's also causing all this scientific anxiety around negative side effects like the
ocean acidification that I just mentioned which by the way we covered in some detail in program
20 way back in August 2018 you can click up there somewhere if you want to jump back down look at
that video but what about this blue carbon then well the IPCC report tells us that blue carbon
is carbon stored in coastal wetlands like salt marshes seagrass meadows and mangrove forests
according to a globally coordinated action program called the blue carbon initiative these coastal
ecosystems capture more carbon per unit area than the forests on land and their website offers a
few more statistics they tell us that 83 percent of the global carbon cycle is circulated through
the oceans and although coastal habitats cover less than 2% of the total ocean area they account
for about half of the total carbon captured in ocean sediments which is quite significant these
coastal ecosystems are also some of the most productive on earth giving us humans crucial
coastal protection from storms and providing a critical habitat for marine species that make
up a major part of people's food security and incomes they also improve and maintain water
quality along coastlines for coastal countries worldwide and they're one of the planet's most
prolific nursery grounds for fish in fact the IPCC report says although they occupy a small part of
the global ocean about seven point six percent coastal seas provide up to 30% of global marine
primary production and about 50% of the organic carbon supplied to the deep ocean in our ignorance
we humans have sadly already done a great deal of damage to these vital resources according to
the blue carbon initiative loss of mangrove habitats are causing carbon emissions that
account for about 10 percent of carbon emissions from all deforestation globally even though they
only cover about 0.7 percent of the area tidal marshes are being lost at a rate of one to two
percent a year they currently cover about 140 million hectares of the surface of the earth an
area almost the size of Alaska but they've lost more than 50 percent of their historical global
coverage seagrass meadows cover less than 0.2 percent of the ocean floor but still store about
10 percent of the carbon buried in the ocean each year and as this Guardian article points
out unlike forests that store carbon for about 60 years before releasing much of it seagrass meadows
often store the carbon for thousands of years until they're disturbed that process is thought
to offset up to 2% of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions according to the Guardian since
the start of the 20th century seagrass meadows worldwide have declined at an average rate of
0.9 percent per year mostly due to direct human impacts such as coastal development and water
quality degradation over the last century about 29 percent of global seagrass has been destroyed
and it's estimated it's releasing carbon at a rate similar to the emissions of Australia
and the UK combined but as well as getting battered by physical human intervention all
of these precious habitats are really beginning to suffer as our ocean waters warm the IPCC tells
us that seagrass meadows in particular are highly sensitive to temperature change in the oceans back
in the Australian summer of 2010-11 a phenomenon known as marine heatwave hit one of the largest
remaining seagrass ecosystems on earth in an area called Shark Bay in Western Australia about
1.3 percent of all the CO2 stored by seagrass across the entire world it's stored there the
underwater heat wave caused the water to warm locally by up to four degrees Celsius resulting
in the loss of about 36% of the area covered by these flowering marine plants events like
this impose a high penalty on our environment as this article by David Nield in Science Alert
explains he says losing seagrasses is a double whammy for our environments health not only do
we lose the plants ability to capture and store CO2 but all the CO2 that's already being stored
gets released back out into the ecosystem the IPCC tell us that as human CO2 emissions have
warmed our atmosphere and our oceans have been absorbing 90% of the extra energy our activities
have been producing so the occurrence of marine heat waves has doubled since the 1980s research
by Conservation International also suggests that the global average number of marine heatwave days
has increased by about 50 percent which means an ocean area that might previously have experienced
about 30 days of heat wave temperatures will now be enduring more like 45 days and that extended
exposure to extreme heat is putting unsustainable and in many cases unsurvivable stresses onto those
delicate ecosystems the IPCC report also points to other climate related factors now threatening
coastal wetlands they state with high confidence that wetlands salinization is occurring at a large
geographic scale they also point out that sea level rise combined with more extreme storms are
causing wetland erosion and habitat loss so the obvious question is what's being done to slow or
reverse the decline of these absolutely vital blue carbon stores well according to their website the
blue carbon initiative partners as well as many other organizations around the world are working
on conservation science policy and management of blue carbon ecosystems globally major objectives
they say include national level accounting of carbon stocks and emissions from blue carbon
ecosystems increase the management effectiveness of blue carbon ecosystems within protected areas
and the development of blue carbon offsets for tourism activities now I'm likely to repeat this
next sentence several times over the course of the next nine months but here goes anyway
we are now fully in the countdown to the COP 26 climate conference which takes place in Glasgow
in November another globally pivotal event is also taking place this November but I'll leave that one
for others to comment on anyway my point is the extreme weather events of 2019 has raised global
public awareness of climate change to a level that means that at COP26 they'll no longer be any room
for prevarication and procrastination among our political leaders a key element of the conference
agenda is that all member states must submit their substantially revised nationally determined
contributions towards rapid climate change mitigation tangible improvement programs like
those highlighted by the blue carbon initiative and others will need to feature very strongly
during those meetings so if you're keen to get stuck into the global climate mitigation effort
and especially if you live in one of the countries directly affected by coastal wetland degradation
there will never be a better time than right now to contact your local or national representative
and find out exactly what your country is planning to present at the conference and
if you're American then there are still 24 states committed to the process so you can hook up with
them to find out how they intend to represent your great nation in the absence of any national
leadership on the most important existential issue ever to face our species but you know as
I said I'll let others comment on that one that's it for this week this video was made possible by
the support and guidance of the channels patrons over at patreon thanks to those of you who've
joined the patron collective since last week and I must just give a quick shout out to new members
pledging $10 or more a month they are Kevin Jury Max Smith Bruce Bryant John Bruce Janet Smith Buck
Mass and Ronnie Chen Wang you can also get involved in supporting and influencing the
channel through monthly content polls and patreon forums by visiting www.patreon.com/justhaveathink
and you can support the channel for free by hitting the like button which apparently
gives the youtube search algorithms a warm tingly feeling in all the right places and by subscribing
to the channel to raise our profile and help get the message out to more and more people
each week dead easy to do that you just need to click down there or on that icon there and don't
forget to hit the bell icon so you get notified about new content as always thanks very much
for watching have a great week and remember to just have a think see you next week you