How does rising atmospheric CO2 affect marine organisms?

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Volume 17:  October 2014 Archive of CO2 Science Postings

Response of Fish to Ocean Warming -- Summary (31 October 2014)
According to the IPCC, CO2-induced global warming will be net harmful to the world's marine species. This summary examines this hypothesis for various fish species, presenting evidence in opposition to the IPCC's point of view...

Plant Growth Database (31 October 2014)
Our latest result of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature is for Bamboo (Grombone-Guaratini et al., 2013)...

Medieval Warm Period (Global) -- Summary (30 October 2014)
Prior to the latter part of the last century, the Medieval Warm Period was universally regarded as just that: a several-century period of warmth during medieval times when the earth was somewhat warmer than it was in the late 1990s. It was also widely acknowledged that the MWP had been preceded by the Dark Ages Cold Period and followed by the Little Ice Age. But even before the new millennium arrived, climate alarmists were attempting to alter climatic history by claiming that the MWP was neither all that warm nor global in scope, in an attempt to portray earth's then-current warmth as being unprecedented over the past one to two thousand years, due to the growing greenhouse effect of ever-increasing anthropogenic CO2 "pollution" of the atmosphere. However, the archives of climate science tell a very different story...

Long-Term CO2 Enrichment Studies (Woody Plants - Sour Orange Trees) -- Summary (30 October 2014)
How long does it take a sour orange tree seedling to achieve a long-term equilibrium rate of growth enhancement in response to a given degree of atmospheric CO2 enrichment? An experiment conducted in Phoenix, Arizona, USA provides the answer for a 300-ppm (about 75%) increase above the urban background value of approximately 400 ppm at the site of the study....

Great Bio-News for the Planet's Polar Terrestrial Invertebrates (29 October 2014)
Climate warming will likely alleviate the stresses of living in a low-temperature environment and benefit a number of polar species...

Elevated CO2 Alleviates Irradiance Stress in a Marine Phytoplankton (29 October 2014)
Future scenarios of global change suggest important benefits for phytoplankton suffering from irradiance stress...

Will the Real New Zealand Temperature Trend Please Stand Up! (28 October 2014)
A new assessment of old data sheds new light on the thermal history of the country...

A Holocene Temperature History of Canada's Devon Island (28 October 2014)
What does it reveal about the Medieval Warm Period in that part of the world?...

CMIP5 Assessments of Indian Ocean Basin-Wide and Dipole Modes (27 October 2014)
The authors identify "considerable biases" in model simulations...

Tropical Cyclones of Australia - Is Global Warming Making them Worse? (27 October 2014)
There may well be a temperature/CO2 signal; it's just not the signal climate alarmists have long been claiming...

What We Know About Effects of Climate Change on Amphibians (24 October 2014)
It's actually not all that much, yet "evidence that climate change is directly contributing to amphibian declines is weak"...

The Response of a Coral Reef Sea Urchin to Ocean Acidification (24 October 2014)
A new mesocosm study probes the subject and effectively dismantles metabolism-based concerns for this marine species under conditions of elevated CO2...

Two Thousand Years of Cyclical Drought in New Mexico, USA (24 October 2014)
Solar variations appear to be the primary cause of periods of drought in northern New Mexico over the past two millennia. Inferring they are caused by anything else, including CO2-induced global warming, is a far-fetched stretch...

Plant Growth Database (24 October 2014)
Our latest result of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature is for Bamboo (Grombone-Guaratini et al., 2013)...

Effects of CO2 on the Growth & Flavonoids of Two Medicinal Plants (22 October 2014)
The yield and pharmaceutical quality of Scutellaria species can be enhanced "with controlled environment production and CO2 enrichment"...

Why 2014 Won’t Be the Warmest Year on Record (21 October 2014)
Much is being made of the “global” surface thermometer data, which three-quarters the way through 2014 is now suggesting the global average this year will be the warmest in the modern instrumental record. Dr. Roy Spencer explains why he feels this is wrong...

Sea Level Rates-of-Rise Along Europe's North Sea Coastline (21 October 2014)
Have they accelerated as the air's CO2 concentration has continued its upward climb?...

Gene Expression Plasticity Evolution in Threespine Stickleback Fish (21 October 2014)
A new study finds extremely compelling support for it, and that is encouraging news for those concerned about animal range expansions or shifts caused by climate change...

Mid- and High-Latitude Forests Respond to Environmental Change (20 October 2014)
To "reduce the uncertainties in predicting future carbon dynamics in forest ecosystems, land surface models should not only consider land-use history, but also account for key physiological processes governing the fate of carbon sequestration in forest ecosystems, such as the effects of CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, and climate warming on vegetation growth."...

Historical Diurnal Temperature Range Trends in CMIP5 Models (20 October 2014)
It would seem that "ubiquitous model deficiencies in cloud cover and land surface processes that impact the accurate simulation of regional minimum or maximum temperature changes" are likely responsible for the inability of the models to simulate real-world DTR observations...

Effects of Elevated CO2 on Eucalypt Growth and Leaf-Spot Severity (20 October 2014)
In going from the lowest to the highest atmospheric CO2 concentrations, shoot dry weight increased by 47% and root dry weight by 24%, while leaf-spot disease incidence declined by 36% and its severity by 57%...

Twentieth Century Changes in California's Sierra Nevada Forests (18 October 2014)
If the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels over the past century or so has been having an effect on the forests of California's Sierra Nevada, that effect has been not only positive, but hugely positive...

CMIP5 Simulations of the North American Monsoon System (17 October 2014)
In how many ways are the current best models still falling short of reality?...

Plant Growth Database (17 October 2014)
Our latest result of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature is for Garden Bean (Bunce, 2014)...

Alleviating Phosphorus Limitations in a Future Acidified Ocean (15 October 2014)
Once again, we have another example of a marine organism that will likely benefit from so-called ocean acidification, even in the face of an important resource limitation...

The Diverse Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine N2 Fixers (15 October 2014)
They range from negative to neutral to positive. Guess which one predominates...

Impacts of Warming and Cooling Trends on Swedish Alpine Flora (14 October 2014)
By what means and how well have the plants dealt with these two climatic challenges?...

Some Incompatibilities of Global and Regional Climate Models (14 October 2014)
Regional- to local-scale predictions of GCMs can often be misleading; and corrections imposed by RCM downscaling can also be misleading...

Modelling Features of the Indian Summer Monsoon via ECHAM5 (14 October 2014)
This study illustrates the fact that in spite of all that the world's climate modelers have accomplished in many different areas, they have only just begun to traverse the long-and-winding road that leads to ultimate climate modeling success; for as they learn ever more about the various facets of Earth's climatic system, they begin to discover there is even more out there in the 'great beyond' that they must successfully reduce to functionally-correct mathematical expressions that can be incorporated into their computer-driven models...

The Impacts of Hot Days with Night Warming on Small Insect Pests (10 October 2014)
The take-home message of this new work is that although many average or mean temperature models predict increasing pest outbreaks in a warming world, the results of Zhao et al. suggest that "outbreaks of some species might decrease due to the effects of night warming on population dynamics." But try getting a climate alarmist to admit that!...

Plant Growth Database (10 October 2014)
Our latest result of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature is for Mung Bean (Mishra and Agrawal, 2014)...

Ocean Acidification Impacts on Cnidarian-Dinoflagellate Symbioses (9 October 2014)
Wave upon wave of new reef coral "youngsters" might well have a significant period of time during which they - and their descendants' descendants - could conceivably better learn to cope with slowly declining-pH seawater...

Six Decades of Northeast Atlantic Phytoplankton Productivity (9 October 2014)
Despite what climate alarmists refer to as an unprecedented rise in temperatures and CO2 over the past few decades, phytoplankton of the Northeast Atlantic are no worse for the wear. In fact, truth be told, they are faring far better!...

Climate Model Biases in Arctic Wintertime Temperature Inversions (8 October 2014)
We find yet another glaring example of the fact that today's CMIP5 models are still not up to the task of adequately portraying Earth's current climate...

Ocean Acidification Impacts on Cnidarian-Dinoflagellate Symbioses (8 October 2014)
Symbiotic sea anemones "could not only survive ocean acidification, but also thrive under future conditions"...

Extreme Surface Air Temperature Trends of Canada: 1961-2010 (7 October 2014)
"Canada has become much less cold but not much hotter"...

Long-term Study of an Alpine Grassland: Stubbornly Coping with Climate Change (7 October 2014)
Alpine flora have a much greater ability to adapt to rising temperatures than climate models generally project, making predictions of their widespread decline and extinction highly unlikely...

Fire Severity of the Sierra Nevada, California, USA (1984-2010) (6 October 2014)
Predictions that there will be excessive, high-severity fire throughout the Sierra Nevada in the future "may be incorrect"...

Plant Growth Database (6 October 2014)
Our latest result of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature is for Mung Bean (Mishra and Agrawal, 2014)...

It's a Jungle Out There ... for Nearly All Ecosystems (3 October 2014)
But the rules of the jungle can be significantly altered by atmospheric CO2 enrichment...

Octocorals Need Not Be Overly Worried About Ocean Acidification (3 October 2014)
Why? Because their bodies are constructed in such a way as to survive declining seawater pH...

Precipitation Over China: CMIP5 Model Simulations vs. Reality (2 October 2014)
Due to various CMIP5 model uncertainties, "future precipitation projections should be interpreted with caution"...

CO2-Enriched Air Boosts Medicinal Value of an Endangered Plant (2 October 2014)
And it does it in terms of both growth stimulation and phytomedicine concentration...

Reef Fish Robustness in the Vicinity of Underwater CO2 Seeps (1 October 2014)
Is it degraded, enhanced or little affected by the acidified water?...

The World Drought Picture: 1951-2010 (1 October 2014)
All things considered, it would appear there has been no dramatic increase in global drought over the past six decades...