Latest Ocean Stories
Danish scientists are warning that uncontrolled global warming might significantly expand the ocean's dead zones, seriously affecting fish and shellfish. Dead zones are low-oxygen areas in the ocean where higher life forms such as fish, crabs and clams are not able to live, the University of Copenhagen researchers said. In shallow coastal regions, such zones can be caused by runoff of excess fertilizers from farming. Professor Gary Shaffer, who led the study, said unchecked global warming...
Scientists have learned that fish poop may be beneficial to maintaining the delicate balance of the Earth's oceans. Using computer models, Rod W. Wilson, of the University of Exeter in England, and colleagues from the US, Canada and England discovered that bony fish excrete a crucial amount of inorganic carbon that works to maintain the oceans' ph balance. Using computer models, researchers estimated that bony fish produce between 812 million and 2,050 million tons of valuable inorganic...
Pew Applauds Historic Action WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- President Bush today designated 3 new marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean totaling more than 195,000 square miles, an area greater than Oregon and Washington combined. Together with Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which was established in 2006 in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, President Bush will have designated monuments protecting 335,561 square miles of ocean, a larger area of the...
A new definition of seawater could boost the accuracy of projections for oceans and climate, scientists said.Oceans shift heat from the equator to the poles, regulating the planet's weather. Changes in salinity and temperature are major forces driving global currents as well as circulation patterns from the surface to the seabed.For scientists to figure out how oceans affect climate and how that interaction could change due to global warming, they must first understand exactly how much heat...
Researchers have discovered that the ocean's chemical makeup is less stable and more greatly affected by climate change than previously believed. The researchers report in the December 12, 2008 issue of Science that during a time of climate change 13 million years ago the chemical makeup of the oceans changed dramatically. The researchers warn that the chemical composition of the ocean today could be similarly affected by climate changes now underway "“ with potentially far-reaching...
A recent study has found that the Southern Ocean has proved more resilient to global warming than previously thought and remains a major store of mankind's planet-warming carbon dioxide.Oceans act as a brake on climate change by absorbing large portions of the extra CO2 released by mankind through burning fossil fuels or deforestation and experts say the Southern Ocean is the largest of these "carbon sinks."Researchers in the past have suggested the vast ocean between Australia and...
Researchers found many of the world's deep-sea octopuses evolved from a common ancestor that still exists in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean.A project called the, "Census of Marine Life" is trying to map the oceans; it started in 2000 and involves more than 2,000 scientists from 82 nations. The first CoML will be completed in 2010. "We are approaching a picture of the oceans ... from microbes to whales," said Ron O'Dor, co-senior scientist of the census of the 2007-08...
A study reported in yesterday's issue of Nature disputes a longstanding picture of how ice sheets influence ocean circulation during glacial periods.The distribution of sunlight, rather than the size of North American ice sheets, is the key variable in changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last four glacial cycles, according to the article. The new study goes back 425,000 years, according to Lorraine Lisiecki, first author and assistant professor in the Department of...
SEATTLE, Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Renowned non-profit organizations, the Pacific Science Center (http://www.pacificsciencecenter.org/ )and Sailors for the Sea (http://www.sailorsforthesea.org/), announced locally today a one-year environmental sailing expedition and circumnavigation around-the-Americas. This education-based voyage and awareness project is the brainchild of David Rockefeller, Jr., noted sailor, philanthropist and member of the Pew Ocean Commission, and Stanwood, Wash. resident...
Ancient water findings can be used to predict future changes during greenhouse conditionsEven though the Cretaceous Period ended more than 65 million years ago, clues remain about how the ocean water circulated at that time. Measuring a chemical tracer in samples of ancient fish scales, bones and teeth, University of Missouri and University of Florida researchers have studied circulation in the Late Cretaceous North Atlantic Ocean. The Late Cretaceous was a time with high atmospheric levels...
Latest Ocean Reference Libraries
The Arctic Ocean which is located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the shallowest and smallest of the world’s five major oceanic divisions. The International Hydrographic Organization recognizes it as an ocean, although, some oceanographers consider it as the Arctic Mediterranean Sea or simply, the Arctic Sea, classifying it a Mediterranean sea or an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be considered as the northernmost...
Asia is the world’s largest and most populous continent. It is located mainly in the eastern and northern hemispheres covering 8.7 percent of the Earth’s whole surface area and making up 30 percent of its land area. With about 4.3 billion people, it hosts 60 percent of the world’s current human population. This continent has a high growth rate in the modern era. For example, during the 20th century, Asia’s population almost quadrupled. This continent is defined as making up the...
Point #1: Warm finger- This region inside the area marked number 1, represents a warm finger of the ocean temperatures. What is occurring is that the warmer air is being pushed faster in this region than the surrounding locations giving us this little finger of warmer temps in that region. Point #2: Warm Eddie- This is a region of warmer temps surrounded on all sides by colder water. Eddies are a closed circulation of water in the ocean that has in this case warmer temps around it. These...
The Peru Current flows from South to North along the western side of South America. This current transports colder air from the south northward towards the equator. This current is responsible for bringing cooler waters off the coast of Peru which is a big reason that they have such high fishing success. However this current can get altered during EL-Nino when the warmer waters of the Pacific are transported west to east and start to replace these colder waters. The Peru current is...
Coastal Upwelling- this is defined as the moving of water from the deeper oceans upwards to the surface of the ocean very commonly found along our cold ocean currents, which are found along the West Coast of the United States and off the Peru coast. Coastal Sinking- this is defined as the warm waters moving in from the east and hitting the coastline and slowly filtering down towards the deeper ocean waters very slowly. This feature is common in our warm ocean currents such as the United...
