wrote:
Dec. 6, 2006

Erica Hupp/Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1237/1726

Rob Gutro
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-4044

RELEASE: 06-364

NASA RESEARCH REVEALS CLIMATE WARMING REDUCES OCEAN FOOD SUPPLY

WASHINGTON - In a NASA study, scientists have concluded that when
Earth's climate warms, there is a reduction in the ocean's primary
food supply. This poses a potential threat to fisheries and
ecosystems.

By comparing nearly a decade of global ocean satellite data with
several records of Earth's changing climate, scientists found that
whenever climate temperatures warmed, marine plant life in the form
of microscopic phytoplankton declined. Whenever climate temperatures
cooled, marine plant life became more vigorous or productive. The
findings will appear in the journal Nature on Dec. 7.

The results provide a preview of what could happen to ocean biology in
the future if Earth's climate warms as the result of increasing
levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

"The evidence is pretty clear that the Earth's climate is changing
dramatically, and in this NASA research we see a specific consequence
of that change," said oceanographer and study co-author Gene Carl
Feldman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt. Md. "It is
only by understanding how climate and life on Earth are linked that
we can realistically hope to predict how the Earth will be able to
support life in the future."



http://www.nasa.gov

-end-

I this supposed to surprise us?

The life in any ecosystem evolved to deal with the environment that
exists there.
Any difference in environment is likely to be less favorable to that
life.