Oceanography

Swirling Currents Deliver Phytoplankton Carbon To Ocean Depths

Crocus and daffodil blossoms mean spring has arrived on land and a similar "greening" event, a massive phytoplankton bloom, unfolds each spring in the Atlantic Ocean. But, what happens to all that organic material produced in the surface ocean?  ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 6 2015 - 8:30am

'Warm Blob' In Pacific Ocean Linked To Weird Weather

The one common element in recent American weather has been its diversity. The West Coast has been drier than usual while the East Coast has had more snow. Fish are swimming into new waters and so hungry seals that don't follow them aare washing up on ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 14 2015 - 10:00am

New Methane Source Discovered In Arctic Ocean

Methane is a greenhouse gas with more warming impact than carbon dioxide but also fortunately a much shorter life in the atmosphere. Due to the popularity of much cleaner natural gas, which has caused CO2 emissions to drop, there are concerns about methane ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 13 2015 - 1:46pm

Iceberg Armadas Didn't Cause North Atlantic Cooling

Though some studies have linked icebergs to abrupt climate change cycles during the last glacial period- by introducing fresh water to the surface of the ocean and changing ocean currents, which changes climate- new findings present a contradictory narrati ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 15 2015 - 1:35pm

Dispersants Sprayed After BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill May Be More Toxic Than The Oil

We are still trying to fully understand the extent of the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill five years ago, one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. ...

Article - The Conversation - Apr 22 2015 - 8:00am

Bacterial Steroids: They Get 'Pumped Up' By CO2 From Dying Phytoplankton

The ocean sucks up heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) building up in our atmosphere with help from tiny plankton. Like plants on land, plankton convert CO2 into organic carbon via photosynthesis and then can sink into the deep ocean, carrying carbon with ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 28 2015 - 9:19am

Why There Is A 200-year Lag Between Climate Events In Greenland And Antarctica

Greenland climate during the last ice age was very unstable, the researchers say, characterized by a number of large, abrupt changes in mean annual temperature that each occurred within several decades. These so-called "Dansgaard-Oeschger events" ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 29 2015 - 2:54pm

New Atlantic Ocean Open Water Dead Zones

Researchers have discovered areas in the tropical North Atlantic, several hundred kilometers off the coast of West Africa, with extremely low levels of oxygen, making them uninhabitable for most marine animals. The levels measured in these 'dead zone ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 30 2015 - 8:33am

Gravity Data Show That Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Melting Increasingly Faster

Antarctica's massive ice sheet has recently lost twice the amount of ice in the west as what it  accumulated in the east, and the southern continent's ice cap is melting ever faster, according to a new study in which researchers "weighed&qu ...

Article - News Staff - May 1 2015 - 11:04pm

Warm Oceans Caused The Mega-Drought And Hottest Years In The 1934-36 Dust Bowl

Two ocean hot spots have been linked to the hottest summers on record for the central United States, in 1934 and 1936. Those two summers and the "Dust Bowl" that saw farming devastated were accompanied by  the worst drought in America of the las ...

Article - News Staff - May 4 2015 - 10:51am