Coral reefs and global climate change is the tenth in a series of Pew Center reports examining the potential impacts of climate change on the U.S. environment. It details the likely impacts of climate change over the next century to coral reef ecosystems both in U.S. waters and around the world. Robert W. Buddemeier of the Kansas Geological Survey, Joan A. Kleypas from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Richard B. Aronson from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab prepared this report, which was published in February 2004. For more information on publications from the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, click here.
The effects of combined sea temperature, light, and carbon dioxide on coral bleaching, 
settlement, and growth is an NOAA funded report that comprises abstracts of papers presented at a meeting held at the Caribbean Marine Research Center, Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas, Jan. 20-24, 2003. This first annual meeting of the Combined Effects Think Tank to Support CREWS Modeling had several objectives: explain what is known of certain coral reef problem domains as they relate to anthropogenic stress and coral reef response; determine which in situ monitoring instruments would help in these research problems; and, provide a dialogue to enhance current expert system modules or to develop new ones.
Recognizing the problem of potential global climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. It is open to all members of the UN and WMO. Climate Change 2001: IPCC Third Assessment Report is a collection of three reports and an overall synthesis, each freely available as PDF in a variety of languages, that examines different aspects of climate change. The Second Assessment Report was published in 1995, and the Fourth Assessment Report (referred to as AR4) is expected to be released in 2007.
Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is a recent paper from the Royal Society (Great Britain) that discusses how carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted to the atmosphere by human activities is being absorbed by the oceans, making them more acidic (lowering the pH the measure of acidity). According to the paper, evidence indicates that emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities over the past 200 years have already led to a reduction in the average pH of surface seawater of 0.1 units and could fall by 0.5 units by the year 2100. This pH is probably lower than has been experienced for hundreds of millennia and, critically, at a rate of change probably 100 times greater than at any time over this period.
