Latest Chemical oceanography Stories

Last fall, EARTH caught up with geochemistry grad student Jeremy Jacquot as he was about to embark on the first U.S.-led GEOTRACES cruise across the Atlantic, where he and 32 researchers were hoping to measure and track concentrations of various trace elements and isotopes. This month, in "Tracking Trace Elements and Isotopes in the Oceans," we follow up with Jacquot as he details the highs, lows and initial findings from the cruise, which was unfortunately cut short due to a ship...

Patrick Lynch, NASA's Earth Science News TeamMary Cleave left the NASA astronaut corps in the early 1990s to make a rare jump from human spaceflight to Earth science. She was going to work on an upcoming mission to measure gradations in ocean color "“ something she had actually seen from low-Earth orbit with her own eyes. From space, differing densities of phytoplankton and algae and floating bits of plant life reveal themselves as so many blues and greens. For Cleave, a former...

Research published today reveals the previously unidentified role that fish play in the production of sediments in the world's oceans, and specifically of the carbonate sediments that contain critical records of changes in ocean chemistry and climate shifts in the geological past.The discovery, made by a team of scientists from the UK and US, helps explain the origins of a key component of marine sediments "“ the fine-grained carbonates, the origins of which are often problematic to...

A new initiative sees world-class sport and science merge as a yacht competing in the Barcelona World Race gathers information on ocean salinity to help validate data from ESA's SMOS water mission. Competitors are about half way through the race, which takes them around the world from Barcelona in Spain and back. The yachts left Barcelona on 31 December and, on reaching the Atlantic, headed south to circle Earth via the capes of Good Hope (South Africa) Leeuwin, (Australia) and Horn...

In an important study that may shed light on human ability to adapt to hypoxia, or inadequate levels of oxygen, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have proven that the genome of flies exposed to long-term hypoxia are changed to permanently affect gene expression. Their findings, to be published online by the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of January 24, 2011, may lead to new targets for development of...

By Anne M Stark, LLNLUsing seawater and calcium to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) in a natural gas power plant's flue stream, and then pumping the resulting calcium bicarbonate in the sea, could be beneficial to the oceans' marine life.Greg Rau, a senior scientist with the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz and who also works in the Carbon Management Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, conducted a series of lab-scale experiments to find out if a seawater/mineral...

Science have probed the climate secrets of the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.The international team used a submersible, designed to withstand immense pressures, to study the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. The scientist early results reveal that ocean trenches are acting as carbon sinks. This suggests that they play a larger role in regulating the Earth's chemistry and climate than what was previously thought. Although explorers Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh reached...

Large hypoxic zones low in oxygen long have been thought to have negative influences on aquatic life, but a Purdue University study shows that while these so-called dead zones have an adverse affect, not all species are impacted equally.Tomas Höök, an assistant professor of forestry and natural resources, and former Purdue postdoctoral researcher Kristen Arend used output from a model to estimate how much dissolved oxygen was present in Lake Erie's hypoxic zone each day from 1987 to...

Persistent lack of oxygen in Earth's oceans affected animal evolutionThe oceans became oxygen-rich as they are today about 600 million years ago, during Earth's Late Ediacaran Period. Before that, most scientists believed until recently, the ancient oceans were relatively oxygen-poor for the preceding four billion years.Now biogeochemists at the University of California-Riverside (UCR) have found evidence that the oceans went back to being "anoxic," or oxygen-poor, around 499...

New results indicate potential to reduce certain greenhouse gas emissions from oceans to atmosphereIncreasing acidity in the sea's waters may fundamentally change how nitrogen is cycled in them, say marine scientists who published their findings in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients in the oceans. All organisms, from tiny microbes to blue whales, use nitrogen to make proteins and other...