Melting ice in the waters off Spitsbergen. Already too hot for some? (Pic Irene Quaile)

When I visited the AWI Biological Institute on the German North Sea island of Helgoland last year for a story on how climate change is affecting marine life, the Institute’s Director Karen Wiltshire mentioned to me that cod was disappearing from the waters around the island. The Atlantic cod, it seems, are moving north, a trend confirmed by a recent research cruise by scientists from the Alfred-Wegener-Institute (AWI).They found large shoals of Atlantic cod in Arctic waters off the coast of Spitsbergen. The biologists were on an expedition to an area formerly inhabited predominantly by Arctic cod. Climate change has warmed the water to the extent that the Atlantic cod, which live in warmer water, are moving north. Now the scientists want to investigate to what extent the two types of cod will be in competition with each other, and which of them will be able to adapt best to the changing living conditions in Arctic waters. It is not only the warming, but the ocean acidification that comes with it, as the oceans absorb more CO2, that is making life difficult for many ocean-dwellers. This was recognised as one of the major problems being caused by climate change in the latest IPCC report. Ice Blog readers may remember my trip to Spitsbergen on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, which was taking scientists and their equipment to Ny Alesund, Spitsbergen, to measure ocean acidification as part of the EPOCA programme back in 2010.

Esperanza docked at Ny Alesund to pick up the “mesocosms” to monitor ocean acidification, 2010 (Pic: Irene Quaile)

The new research is part of a German national research project on ocean acidification, BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification). 14 institutes are investigating how marine communities react to ocean acidification and what the economic and social consequences are likely to be.The six scientists on this summer’s expedition were surprised to find the water off north-east Spitsbergen had a temperature of 4.5°C when they went up there in August, looking to collect fish samples. Polar cod live in water around 0°C. The warmer water comes up from the Atlantic in the summer months. Expedition leader Dr. Felix Mark and his colleagues from AWI and the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf found that it was mostly young Atlantic cod they were catching in their nets. This is a sign of a very fundamental change in the Arctic, says Mark. The warmer temperature means the Atlantic cod, which also used to live in the North Sea, now have ideal conditions in Arctic regions. The German team thinks this species is already dominating the warmer surface waters around Spitsbergen.

Warming oceans are having an impact on fish numbers(Pic: Irene Quaile, off Greenland)

The question now is what this means for polar cod, and whether competition between the two fish types will be influenced by ocean acidification, which affects not only the fish but also their food supply. Atlantic cod has a much more varied diet than its polar relative, which is specialised on certain types of small crustaceans.(More information on “The Fishsite“). If these are affected negatively by ocean acidification, polar cod would lose out. Mark and his colleagues were collecting live samples to take back to the AWI lab in Bremerhaven in northern Germany to test how they and their prey react to increasing acidity in the water.Polar cod play an important role in the Arctic food web. It is eaten by other fish, birds and marine mammals like whales and seals.

Karen Wiltshire on Helgoland (Pic: Irene Quaile)

People in the High North are already benefiting from an increased catch of Atlantic cod. But while the traditional “fish and chips” gain popularity up there, down here in the North Sea area, we may have to resort – as AWI Helgoland chief Wiltshire quipped when I was there – to “jellyfish and chips”, with some species of jellyfish thriving in the warming North Sea waters.

Mind your step?

The Arctic Frontiers conference came to an end in Tromsö on Friday with more presentations and q/a sessions on different aspects of scientific research and findings on the region, from deepsea observatories to melting permafrost and the problems of climate change for indigenous peoples, including reindeer-herders in Arctic areas.
The papers are all available online.
Pick up some scientific papers from Arctic Frontiers

Meanwhile there’s been no stop to developments on climate change in the headlines. President Obama is going full speed ahead with his plans to tackle climate change.

The German government has reached an agreement on a (highly controversial)package to make people scrap their old cars, buy new ones, and – ideally, in theory – reduce emissions.
The German government has also given the go ahead for the iron fertilization experiment in the Antarctic we were discussing before I left for Tromso.
Latest on iron
WWF and others are protesting. There have been some alarming measurements of warming in the Antarctic. The new international Renewable Energies Agency has been launched. And WWF has come up with a new study on the economics of combatting climate change.
The Ice Blogger could blog on all day. Instead, I’ll leave you to check out the links and enjoy a couple of pics of the amazing colours of Arctic Norway from the air.

In the part of Germany where I live, it has actually turned very cold over the past few days, with temperatures down to minus 10C at night. Where does that leave us with global warming, asks Christopher B. in his comment. Indeed I have heard some sceptical neighbours say “so much for global warming”. The trouble is we would like to be able to understand everything instantly and draw immediate conclusions from what we experience. And with global climate patterns, that is just not possible and we need a really long-term view. Yes, it can be colder locally and still getting warmer overall. And as a planet, we are not doing anything like enough to avert potentially catastrophic warming.
Yesterday, I was talking to a friend on a winter hike in the “Eifel” region, about a prediction on the radio the other day that the Arctic was melting much faster than expected, and a reminder that if the Greenland ice sheet melts, sea levels will rise by up to 7 metres. (I’d like to give you a link to the report we heard, but am having trouble locating it on the websites where I’d expect to find it. Strange how some worrying reports just come on a couple of time then seem to disappear.)
Anyway, I was surprised when “Siggi”, who is normally quite critical of industry, said at least the German car-makers were putting an effort into developing smaller cars that use less fuel. Now this is not what German cars are generally known for, and it seems to me they have a long way to go. But compared to the US car market, we are exemplary, Siggi pointed out. Well, everything is relative. Normally, I am more inclined to the glass being “half-full” than “half-empty” approach.
But just because another country, continent, region, sector, is even worse than we are – that doesn’t make us good. Does it?