Presentation: Climate Change and the Ocean
Jack Barth, an oceanographer from Oregon State University, will describe how winds, currents and climate change shape Oregon’s coastal ocean and marine ecosystem. He’ll explain how global warming is influencing the coastal ocean, including rising sea level, warming temperatures and marine heat waves, ocean acidification, and declining levels of dissolved oxygen. Jack will describe how areas with low oxygen, so low that some marine organisms can be harmed, are formed in the coastal ocean during summer. He will present results from a recent analysis of thousands of near-bottom observations of dissolved oxygen near the seafloor that yields a sharply focused picture of where low-oxygen zones exist off the Pacific Northwest and where oxygen is plentiful for marine life.
Speaker: Dr. Jack Barth
Jack Barth is a professor of oceanography in Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. His research seeks to understand how coastal ocean circulation and water properties shape and influence coastal marine ecosystems. Recently, Jack led OSU’s Marine Studies Initiative, a program to unite marine-related research, teaching, and outreach and engagement across OSU and the state of Oregon. The Initiative resulted in a new Marine Studies degree at OSU, one that focuses on the social, political, and cultural issues of coasts and the ocean in the context of a meaningful understanding of marine natural science. Jack received a PhD in Oceanography in from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography. He is a Fellow of The Oceanography Society and of the American Meteorological Society
Jack Barth has led a number of research, technology development and ocean observing system projects off Oregon and around the world. His present research includes a focus on the characteristics and formation of low oxygen zones off Oregon. Jack’s research team uses autonomous underwater gliders, robots beneath the sea surface, logging over 150,000 km of measurements – equivalent to about 3.75 times around the Earth — over the last 18 years. From 2004 to 2007, he was a member of the National Science Foundation’s Observatory Steering Committee that launched the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) including the Endurance Array installed off Oregon and Washington. From 2013-2016, Jack served on the U.S. West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel, and, from 2018-2022, he co-chaired Oregon’s Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Coordinating Council. He is a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of Oregon’s Ocean Policy Advisory Council. Jack is also a member of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) MONITOR Committee, responsible for coordinating ocean observations across the six PICES member nations.