📋 Tender Overview
By Ivonne Montes, scientific researcher at IGPWithin the framework of World Ocean Day, held every June 8, it is urgent to make visible an aspect often ignored from climate change: its impact on the dynamics and health of the ocean.
The oceans are crucial allies against global warming, but this function has a cost. The waters are warming, acidifying and deoxygenating, which already affects ecosystems, marine species and coastal ways of life.
The sustained increase in the temperature of the Mar alters the ocean currents and the distribution of heat, intensifying extreme phenomena such as the child, cyclones and waves of marine heat, which aggravate the loss of biodiversity. In addition, many species migrate to colder waters, destabilizing ecosystems and affecting fishing.
Oxygen loss aggravates the situation. The so -called areas of minimum oxygen expand and approach the coast, reducing habitats and the massive death of fish, as has already happened in Peru. This deoxygenation is directly related to global warming and excess nutrients that reach from the mainland.
To this is added the oceanic acidification, caused by the dissolved CO2, which harms calcifying organisms such as corals, hedgehogs and clams, a process that affects the entire marine food chain. The increase in sea level also generates saline intrusion into coastal rivers and aquifers, which impacts the availability of fresh water and transforms wetlands.
In Peru these changes are especially relevant. Our sea is part of one of the most productive regions in the world, but also one of the most sensitive. Understanding what happens in the ocean is key to making evidence -based decisions.
From science, tools are already developed to monitor and anticipate these changes. The Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP) contributes with projects, such as SEPICAF, which uses Argo buoys to observe temperature, salinity and oxygen, or numerical models such as the Earth System Model Regional IGP (RESM-COW), which allow these processes to better understand. However, greater investment, continuity and articulation with public management is required.
World Ocean Day should not only be a moment of reflection, but of action. Protecting the ocean is protecting life. It is time to strengthen research, restore marine ecosystems, reduce sources of pollution and build public policies based on oceanographic knowledge. The ocean has protected us for centuries. Today, it is up to us to protect it. IGP: <<Science to protect us, science to advance>>.
Opinion column published in Diario Correo Arequipa
