And were live this morning awaiting the start on the forum from the center for strategic and international studies. Live coverage should start in a moment. Thank you all for we really appreciate you joining us. Thats better. Thank you all for coming today. Really appreciate you joining us here today. Thanks for coming out this morning. I think weve got a really exciting morning of discussion. First of all, breeief introductions, im Whit Saumweber director of the stephenson ocean security project. And from my point of view, there is no better representation of that nexus than the issue of Climate Change and how its impacting our oceans and what that means for our broader world. A few weeks ago the ipcc released reports taking deeper dives into the effects Climate Change is having on this world. One focused on the impact on lands, and the ocean and the cry owe sphere. That report is fascinating. Its the current state of the science about what we know, what we understand, the impacts of Climate Change are going to be on the ocean. And it posted a really, really stark view of the differences between taking strong, aggressive action and taking no action at all, continuing on the course that we are on. It talked about a real divergence in paths with respect to change and adaptation. Now, theres been quite a bit of discussion i think over the past couple of weeks about that report. Were going to talk a little bit about that report today and whats in it. But i want to take a special focus on how the challenges and impacts of the report describes, translates into policy issues and in particular, how those issues are reflected in the security space. Climate has been called a readiness challenge, a source of instability. It poses acute threats for today and strategic threats for tomorrow. But the ways in which the physical and ecological impacts translate to specific Security Issues can be vague and unfortunately as we know, bureaucracies dont do well with vague. I hope our conversation can move that dialogue forward and think deeply about how theyre intertwined. If we do so, maybe we can move toward a more direct approach to coming up with solutions. We need to manage the coming world of today for the changed world tomorrow. The first panel is going to talk about the science of the report and some of those findings and how those findings might effect specific policy issues. The second panel is going to talk about how they translate into security challenges and close up with a keynote where ill be joined by richard john stevenson. I would like to thank you again for coming today and introduce our first panel. Ill run through everybody here and ask our first speaker to come up and say a few words. We have ko barrett, bob watson, we have paula bontempi, and weve got kathy mills. Thank you, again for joining us and, ko, i would like to welcome you on stage. Thanks, whit. Good morning, everyone. Its my job this morning to kick off the conversation by providing some of the most relevant findings from the report that we put out just two weeks ago. And as an introduction to the report, were looking at the ocean and cryoshere. From the very stops of the highest mountains, the polar regions, to the deepest parts of the ocean and what we find is that already there, and especially there, were seeing evidence of humancaused Climate Change. Is someone going to advance these slides for me or should i magically do something . Great, lets go to the next one too. Im not going to be able to talk about the high mountains thanks the coastal some of the coasting impacts in my initial presentation although happy to dive into those with questions. But i kind of view the report where do i point . So ill actually just kind of continue a little bit, well let the slides catch up to us. So kind of one of the main messages emerging just from a macro level from the report is that for decades the ocean and cry o the cryosphere have been taking the brunt of Climate Change. Okay. Great. So the way ive structured this report is to just focus in on a couple of the changes that the report finds have already been observed, to briefly touch on what possible futures could look like, and then to talk about some of the implications for the for marine policy and for species migration, et cetera one of the main report findings is not a new one in terms of green land and an arctic ice sheets melting. The new finding here is that these are the major drivers of accelerated Sea Level Rise. And these areas are melting from below which is causing its now kind of surpassed ocean thermal expansion as a major driver for Sea Level Rise. During the last century, we find that it rose by 15 centimeters. Its rising twice that rate now. With the highest scenario productions, we could be over one meter of Sea Level Rise by 2100. Also, over the last 40 years, Arctic Sea Ice has decreased for all months of the year, but sea ice changes in september which is when we usually see the lowest sea ice is likely unprecedented for the last 1,000 years. Next slide, please. The loss of summer sea ice and spring snow cover on land have contributed to amplified warming in the arctic where surface air temperature has increased by more than double the global average. The ocean has taken up 90 of the excess heat in the climate system and about a quarter of humancaused co2 emissions, making the ocean warmer, more acidic, and losing oxygen. Marine waves, which is a new topic, have doubled in frequency since the 1980s and have become longer lasting, more intense, and more extensive, especially harming warm water corals, kelp forests and the distribution of marine life. I know you cant see the details on this slide but i include it because this is a graphic representation of what our choices are Emissions Reductions look like for some key areas. On the top left is the projections for marine heat waves moving into the future. The blue is kind of a projection for the lowest emissions scenarios that we studied in our report. The red is a projection for the highest emission scenarios. And you can see quite clearly the difference if we choose a more intensive Emissions Reductions pathway. Below that frame is a graphic on Arctic Sea Ice extent which isnt something near 50 reduction. But with the higher emissions scenario, you see near 100 reduction of sea ice extent in the arctic in september. And the large graphic shows the difference that would happen with these two emission scenarios with regard to Sea Level Rise going out to 2,300. So stark, stark difference depending on what action pathway we take. Next slide, please. Clearly there are implications for marine stability and security. Since about 1950, many species have undergone shifts in their geographic range and seasonal activity due to warming, sea ice change, chemical changes to their has been has been talts. Our warms has contributed to a decrease in cash potential. In some areas, changing conditions have contributed to the expansion of suitable habitat. But its not easy. Sometimes the governance structures regulating fishery dont make it possible to take advantage of the benefits that could be seen. Shifts in species distribution and abundance has challenged international and National Ocean fisheries governance including in the arctic and in terms of regulating fishing to secure ecosystem integrity. Food and water security have been negatively impacted by changes in snow cover, lake and river ice and perma frost. They have disrupted food availability within herding, hunting, sustenance living areas, harming the livelihoods and cultural identity of the arctic. I had a chance to visit alaska last month and saw firsthand how Indigenous Peoples are having to change where they go to hunt and its quite extreme. So they have adjusted the timing of activities to respond to changes in the seasonality and the safety of land, snow and ice conditions. Shipbased transportation has increased over the past two decades with sea ice reductions. It poses new risks to the arctic marine ecosystems. Just within a 24hour period, two tourist cruise ships came into port having traversed from green land across the north sea. Next slide. Just final slide for me, the main take away from these messages the faster we act, the more able we will to make changes. Thanks, whit. Thanks, ko. Its a pleasure to be here this morning. I was the former chair of the platform. Ko has covered this already in many respects. You heard how were changing the earths climate. Its becoming warmer. Oceans are rising, sea ice is melting, the glaciers are melting, more pollutants in the ocean, its overfished, most of the oceans. Weve got a problem. It just came back from an arctic meeting and the question they were posing is, is the melting of sea ice an opportunity or a threat to national security. And thats the and they were Foreign Ministers that were there, not environment ministers. But its clear that since the 1950s many marine species have undergone a shift in nature. Theres been a shift in boast speci both species composition in each of these ecosystems. Also, different interactions now between species and these are having cascading affects on both the structure and the functioning of these ecosystems. And just to put it in perspective, these we can Systems Services are absolutely essential to human wellbeing. Theres been a shift in different marine species, both towards the north, in the northern hemisphere, and the south, and since the 1950s, theres been shifts of up to about 50 kilometers per decade in organisms in the upper couple of hundred meters of the worlds oceans and 30 kilometers for species on the sea floor. These are significant changes. Arctic production has increased in the waters and springtime blooms are occurring earlier in the year. Unfortunately many associated Marine Mammals and seabirds have been very negatively affected by habitat contraction. 50 of coastal wetlands have been lost in the last 100 years. 50 . Changes in sea glass meadows and kelp, theyre expanding at high latitude. Significant changes. Coral reefs already adversely affected by the changes weve seen in that temperature more than anything else. But coral reefs are clearly one of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world. Narrow sensitive to sea surface temperature, theyre sensitive to a lesser degree of Sea Level Rise, theyre sensitive to landbased pollution. Theyre already in serious danger and with these projected changes in temperature in the future, its not unreasonable to say that coral reefs have a very low probability of surviving. What i like about this report is it did look at the full range of plausible temperature changes. The 1. 5 degree report looked at 1. 5 degree celsius. This report did look that we might be on a higher trajectory to a world thats 3, 4 and 5 degrees celsius. And thats my view. The Paris Agreement is a superb agreement. The current pledges are totally and utterly inadequate to meet a 1. 5 degree world. Much more likely to be on a path of 3 to 4 degrees world and this report plays out what are the implications of these higher changes in temperature and one of the most sensitive systems to these changes in temperature are indeed coral reefs when also affected by these other pressures as well. I wont talk about fisheries. Were going to hear much more profound talk in a few minutes. Theres no question, Ocean Acidification along with sea ice changes, continued loss of sea ice is affecting the polar ecosystems, one of the major issues that was talked at the arctic forum a couple of days ago and of course and im sure youll hear more from the fisheries expert and that is to what degree is this going to provide opportunities for fishing in the arctic region versus, as i said earlier, potential issues that we have to look on that national security. But the key point that was talked about at that particular meeting and is raised in these reports, if one is going to have far more exploitation of the natural resources, theyre now much more meanable to extraction. Will we continue in the unsubstantial matter in the way weve exploited the worlds oceans to date, basically. And so fundamentally where are we . Were in trouble. Its very simple. Biodiversity is in trouble on the oceans, on land, everywhere, and these are not environmental issues. These are development issues, Economic Issues, Security Issues, their moral issues, and social issues. And in reality, the results are very similar, thank goodness. To the report we put out in may of this year, as we said, Marine Biodiversity is impacted at an unprecedented rate by human activities. 33 of reef forming coral sharks are threatened with extinction. Only 3 of the worlds ocean is free from human pressure. 3 , basically. Globally, fishing exploitation has had the biggest impact on Marine Biodiversity, but climate is likely to be the dominant driver in the next few decades which is why we have to look at change and biodiversity as one single issue. They cannot be looked at anymore as two separate issues. We have to get the conventions to Work Together and the key issue on all of these things is, these are issues that affect all Government Departments and the stove piping of Government Departments and the stove piping of u. N. Agencies means we do not have the right governance structures to address these particular issues. And the other issue which comes at very nicely in this report is the emerging of plastic pollutions, also a major threat to Marine Biodiversity. With that, all i can say is, we need to act now. We should have acted 10, 20, 30 years ago. [ applause ] good morning, everybody. I do have some slides, if its possible to use them. That would be great. Thank you to whit and csis for the invitation. This is not my normal crowd. I come from nasa. Whats probably more well known are things like, you know, exploration of our solar system and beyond, the mars rover, and then of course the more well known program for looking at the moon and beyond. But we have part of our mission to explore the earth, to understand the earth and think about our observations, models and what we learn about the earth and our research for not only basic and applied science, but for societal benefit. And we do this at nasa using an earth observing satellite fleet. You may be thinking, whats the relevance to Something Like the ipcc report . We have 23 on orbit missions and as you can see from whats shown on the screen, a number of missions that are in formulation, development, and some that have lasted long beyond their scheduled missions and this becomes critical. If we want to look at the entire global earth system and look at the properties of the earth system over time, then this is one way to do it. This is not the only way to do it. This is at a global scale and the partnership with the observations which i have learned over time sustained observations of anything are a very difficult thing to sell and where they come into play is where you have reports like the ipcc. We dont just use the low earth orbit. We actually use our space station as well, owned and operate by a global community, peppered with earthobserving censers, critical for getting a higher spatial, higher resolution view of some of the earths system. This becomes very important when we think about reports like the ipcc. Now, i was tasked to talk to you about ocean production and i wish that everybody in this room knew what that was or why they should care. If you dont, im going to tell you. Im going to walk through this. The ocean has whats known as food changes and a food web. And theyre shown here in these photos. If you look at the righthand side, what you can look at are the producers, right here on the bottom. The primary producers. We have a type of fphytoplankto. They are the equivalent of land plants. They go through the process of photo synthesis where they take Carbon Dioxide and water and produce organic carbon. Why is that important . You just heard details about Carbon Dioxide and what that does to earths climate and the impacts of that on everything living and things not living. And why humans should care and the economics. So lets get to that. Who care is about these tiny plants in the ocean. Phytoplankton conduct 50 of earths primary production with their bio mass turning over in the ocean every two to six days. How do you gauge that change and has that kind of impact on the Global Carbon cycle . Phytoplankton mitigate onethird of human Carbon Emissions each year. You should start to see why these organisms are important in understanding our earths system. The economics of it, i did a simple Google Search of reports and came up with tidbits referenced in recent u. N. Reports. Youll hear more about this in a moment. But fisheries support about 12 of the worlds livelihoods. The ocean contributes greater than 282 billion to the u. S. Gdp. The commercial value of u. S. Fisheries from just coral reefs, just coral reefs, exceeds a hundred Million Dollars and the u. S. Harmful bloom events have an average act of about 50 million each year based on the region that theyre located in. When you start to translate those numbers and i footnoted them all in my notes, that adds up to big business and why we should care even more deeply about something not just for human wellbeing, but for our earth system and economics in general. Lets translate this even further. How do we do this from space . Some of the ipcc analyses conclusions are based on satellite data. From space, this is what a phytoplankton bloom looks like. Right there. The phytoplankton are responsible for going through photo synthesis and this has a huge impact on regional and