Latest Pacific ocean Stories
In a vivid example of how a small geographic feature can have far-reaching impacts on climate, new research shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice age episodes dating back more than 100,000 years.The international study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that the repeated opening and closing of the narrow strait due to fluctuating sea levels affected currents that transported heat and salinity...
TOFOL, KOSRAE, Federated States of Micronesia, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Located in the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean, the Micronesian island of Kosrae celebrates the Christmas season in unique fashion, both on land and underwater. Christmas Marching: Christmas Marching on Kosrae is truly a one-of-a-kind island event. According to Kosrae Visitors Bureau Director Grant Ismael, every year Kosraens participate in Christmas Marching, a blend of Western/Christian Christmas traditions and...
Another typhoon in the northern Philippines really is something to be scared about, and Mirinae is expected to make landfall there in the mid-morning hours on Halloween, October 31. Mirinae will be the fourth major storm to hit the Philippines in one month bringing more rain to an already flood-weary region.NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite is already hard at work analyzing rainfall, to provide meteorologists with an idea of what can be expected when the storm...
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Celebrating San Francisco Bay's enigmatic shark species, Aquarium of the Bay, in partnership with Sea Stewards, presents SHARKtober, a month-long event focusing on the local shark population. SHARKtober celebrates the White Sharks' annual return to the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, while increasing awareness of the five different species of sharks that live in the Bay. Shark-related activities will take place all month at the...
Research conducted at Texas A&M University casts doubts on the notion that El Niño has been getting stronger because of global warming and raises interesting questions about the relationship between El Niño and a severe flu pandemic 91 years ago. The findings are based on analysis of the 1918 El Niño, which the new research shows to be one of the strongest of the 20th century.El Niño occurs when unusually warm surface waters form over vast stretches of the eastern Pacific...
BRUSSELS, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- After a four-week journey, Project Kaisei, a study of the North Pacific Gyre and the marine debris that has collected in this oceanic region, has completed its two-boat mission to the North Pacific Gyre with the return to San Francisco Bay of the four-mast sailing boat Kaisei on August 31, 2009. Throughout the expedition, of which BIR was the main sponsor, the crew of the Kaisei and of the New Horizon kept the public abreast of all findings and preliminary...
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography says it's investigating whether a Texas-size vortex of trash in the Pacific Ocean could be turned into fuel. Scripps researchers recently returned from the area, dubbed the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, about 1,000 miles of the California coast. The patch, officially known as the North Pacific gyre, is one of five places in the world's oceans where trade winds trap floating debris and damage ecosystems, The San Diego Union Tribune reported...
Scientists recently returned from an expedition into the "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch."The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) crew got a close up view of the plastic debris floating in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean.The researchers left San Diego on August 2 to visit the garbage patch, located 1,000 miles off California's coast.Samples of the garbage were taken for analysis.Little has been known about the size of the "garbage...
New Zealand is the site of one of the world's youngest subduction zones, where the Pacific Plate of Earth's crust dives beneath the Australian Plate. Now, a University of Utah study shows how water deep underground helps the subduction zone mature and paves the way for it to generate powerful earthquakes.The study in the Aug. 6 issue of the journal Nature "expands our understanding of the sources of earthquake failure," says Phil Wannamaker, the study's main author and a...
A group of scientists set sail from San Francisco Tuesday to study the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- a floating dump some say is twice the size of Texas. The researchers say they hope to learn more about the watery garbage dump -- about 1,000 miles west of California -- such as its size, its effects on marine life and whether it can be cleaned up, the San Jose Mercury News reported. This is a problem that is kind of out of sight, out of mind, but it is having devastating impacts on the...
Latest Pacific ocean Reference Libraries
The Pacific Rim is a reference to places around the edge of Pacific Ocean. The term Pacific Basin includes the Pacific Rim and the islands within the Pacific Ocean. It roughly overlaps with the geologic Pacific Ring of Fire. These countries are generally considered to be a part of the Pacific Rim, since they lie along the Pacific Ocean: North/East Asia Russia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand,...
North America is a continent completely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost completely within the Western Hemisphere. It’s also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It’s bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. This continent covers an area of approximately 9,540,000 sq miles, about 4.8 percent of the plants surface or about...
Honolulu, located in the Pacific Ocean, has a mostly marine time climate and has a pretty consistent temperature average from month to month. This is a look at the La-Nina impacts on the local area. January 2012: For the month of January it is typical to see average high temps in the 80’s while overnight lows drop into the 70’s. During the La-Nina event January temps were normal 71% of the month at the, with above temps 23% of the month and 6% of the month found the temps dropping...
If you look in the photo above you can see the line of Cumulus clouds that appear in the background. These clouds were created by daytime heating and also an unstable atmosphere. The moisture for these clouds was rising from the Pacific Ocean. The darker cloud is the stronger of the cumulus clouds meaning that the majority of the moisture is being absorbed by that cloud. The clouds around this one are also starting to get more moisture from the ocean to build. Above the cumulus clouds you...
The Giant Tube Worm (Riftia pachyptila) is a species of marine invertebrate related to tube worms and commonly found in the intertidal and pelagic zones. This species lives from a mile to several miles deep underwater, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean near black smokers, where it is able to tolerate extremely high hydrogen sulfide levels. The common name “giant tube worm” is also applied to the largest living species of shipworm, Kuphus polythalamia. Despite given the name...
