1. Bioresources Adaptation
Bioresources adaptation is a very specific work that focus on laboratory experiment. It focus on the study of different species and marine organism and its adaptive response towards changes in the marine environment which focus on parameters changes such as temperature and acidification. The study addresses different responses which includes, feed intake, growth, performance and other parameters. A comparative work with Group B on acidification impact and baseline data for adaptation will be provided from Group A’s numerical data output.
Objectives :
- Primary productivity such as zooplankton will be subjected to temperature, pH and light regime fluctuation on the survival, growth and productivity performances (Objective I).
- Coral reefs are severely threatened with climate change. The study aim to establish coral population dynamic around Peninsular Malaysia, particularly the unknown mesophotic reefs.
(Objective II). - Besides, the chronic and acute climate change impacts on reefs will be investigated via environmental parameters in microcosm set-up (Objective III).
- Fish will be subjected to different temperatures. Concurrently, osmorespiration will be assessed using respirometry assay. Ionoregulation is determined by ionic, plasma and tissue metabolites analysis. This will model mechanism of marine organism to cope with the change (Objective IV).
2. Ocean Dynamic
The anchor project for this program will be the study on Interaction of ocean dynamics with the climate system of past, present and future using ocean observation, integrated data and numerical modelling. This study will provide the fundamental understanding on ocean characteristics when global warming reach 1.5°C. Any changes on productivity, bio-chemistry or sea level are basically related to these changes. By using numerical modelling approach, different climate scenarios and global to regional-local comparison will be conducted to understand the difference this scenarios produce especially a different spatial scale. This study will try to gather many different parameters through its baseline data accumulation, so it will provide critical information that can be used by other research projects.
Objectives :
- To determine the changes and impact of climate change towards the ocean dynamics and upwelling processes in southern South China Sea.
- To investigate the impact of climate changes on the alteration of current air-sea feedback processes over Malaysia.
- To determine the impact of ocean dynamic changes under 1.5/2C increase towards the biogeochemistry of the study area.
- To establish baseline information using integrated ocean observation network from past, present and future that will be built as a long-term platform for climate change data management system.
3. Ocean Productivity
Ocean productivity focusing on the larger scale of marine environment. Baseline and scenarios data of a larger environment will be provided by group A since productivity are very much influence by ocean processes and dynamics. However the major interest of this group will be on the effect of ocean characteristics changes towards eutrophication, harmful Algal Bloom (HABs) and jelly fish blooms which is closely related to changes in temperature. This phenomena usually cause catastrophic events that caused deleterious socio-economic impacts.
Objectives :
- To assess the impacts of multi scale physical-chemical processes driven by global warming on the coastal ecosystem health of Malaysian waters.
- To determine how the phytoplankton community assemblages respond to global warming by means of on-field and in-lab microcosm settings.
- To characterize the effects and responses of biological carbon pumps and its potential in sequestering carbon under a warming climate.
- To develop and evaluate ecosystem health indices and risk assessment under a warming climate and its synergistic effects.
- To integrate meteorological, hydrological, and ecological models for projecting climate change impacts on primary productivity in our marine and coastal ecosystems.
4. Sea Level Rise
Sea level change is an important consequence of climate change, and one of the most important elements that get significant attention in the IPCC reports. The basis of this study will surely focus on the impact towards coastal communities. The study long term changes in water level, wave, current and extreme events from temporal and spatial variability in the proximity of the coastal defence structures and critical area in Malaysia. In addition, we plan to approach this topics from different perspective which hold a novel value. There is no specific research being made to understand impact of ice-sheet vulnerabilities to sea level at tropical seas. The available information we had now is only estimation based on global generalization. This study plan to investigate the influence of Antarctic ice-sheet vulnerability to sea level at the southern South China Sea.
Objectives :
- To predict the influence of Antarctic ice-sheet vulnerability and thermal expansion to sea level pattern at Peninsular Malaysia from 1.5 to 2.0°C rise in global temperature relative to pre-industrial level (i.e. 1850–1900).
- To determine the effects of coastal erosion based from monsoon and extreme events in the proximity of the coastal defence structures and critical area.
- To simulate the impact of wave overtopping under changing climate in developing safer evaluation tool of coastal protection.
- To identify direct and indirect impact of risk areas change on environment and socio-economic of coastal communities.