Climate Change and sea temperatures: The effects of hash weather conditions on the sea temperature

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By: Gabriel Quaye Morrison 

Photo credit: Gabriel Quaye Morrison 


The oceans play a significant role in regulating global climate. Their heat capacity (and thus net heat uptake) is about 1000 times larger than that of the atmosphere (Barange and Perry, 2010) and they therefore absorb significant amount of heat emitted globally. Such changes in ocean temperatures can change the dynamics of aquatic environments of the region. Changes in ocean dynamics could lead to changes in migration patterns of fish and possibly reduce fish landings, especially in coastal fisheries (African Action, 2007).

For example, increased ocean temperature may affect upwelling along the Gulf of Guinea, which can make the ocean waters become unsuitable for fisheries, causing a reduction in and possible collapse of fishing activities (African Action, 2007 in Urama and Ozor, 2010). Inland waters are also equally vulnerable and could be impacted strongly by climate change (IPCC, 2007). 

The international Dialogue on Water and Climate (2004) noted that waters stress will increase significantly in those regions that are already relatively dry, such as SSA. One of the stresses that inland waters of SSA are facing is increasing water surface temperature.

According to Christensen et al. (2007 in Barange and Perry, 2010) warming in Africa is very likely going to be larger than the global annual mean warming throughout the region and in all seasons, with drier subtropical regions warming more than the wetter tropics with a consequent decline in rainfall.

Rising water temperature also threatens biodiversity. Generally, fish have a thermal preference that optimizes physiological processes (Abowei, 2010). If water temperature rises above the maximum tolerable threshold of a species, then its existence is threatened. Urama and Ozor (2010) provide an example from the Lebialem Highlands in Cameroon where women have started to hunt for tadpoles and frogs because there are no fish in most of Bangwa Rivers.However, even the number of tadpoles and frogs have significantly declined (partly) due to the warming rivers that have increased the amount of predator fish in an area they have never inhabited before.




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