Latest Physical oceanography Stories
An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise along the Atlantic Coast of the United States was 2 millimeters faster in the 20th century than at any time in the past 4,000 years.Sea-level rise prior to the 20th century is attributed to coastal subsidence. Put simply, land is being lost to subsidence as the earth continues to rise in response to the removal of the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period....
Scientists have reported a giant iceberg over twice the size of Sydney Harbor is on a slow but steady collision course with Australia, according to the Telegraph UK.Researchers at the Australian Antarctic Division (ADD) spotted the 12 mile-long and 5-mile wide chunk of ice floating close to the mainland.The iceberg, known as B17B, is currently drifting 1,000 miles from Australia's west coast and is gradually moving north with the ocean current and prevailing wind.Should the iceberg...
Powerful westerly winds in the south Pacific have steered a flotilla of icebergs initially headed toward New Zealand to the east, away from the nation, according to an oceanographer at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.A shipping alert was distributed last week while maritime authorities monitored the icebergs as they drifted from Antarctica toward New Zealand's South Island."It looks like they've all disappeared east of New Zealand," oceanographer...
Over one hundred Antarctic icebergs are moving towards New Zealand in an extraordinary happening that has raised a shipping warning, officials announced Monday.An Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist stated that the bergs, pinpointed by satellites, have floated past the Auckland Islands, and are 280 miles northeast of the Island.Scientist Neal Young noted that the icebergs, including some that are 650 feet in width, were in a large group, which implies that there could be more.The...
A new study finds that a species of sea star stays cool using a strategy never before seen in the animal kingdom. The sea stars soak up cold sea water into their bodies during high tide as buffer against potentially damaging temperatures brought about by direct sunlight at low tide."Sea stars were assumed to be at the mercy of the sun during low tide," said the study's lead author, Sylvain Pincebourde of François Rabelais University in Tours, France. "This work shows that...
A huge iceberg was identified near an island between Antarctica and Australia, an usual display in northern waters, Australian scientists announced on Thursday. Australian Antarctic Division researchers employed at Macquarie Island caught a glimpse of the iceberg last Thursday 5 miles away from the coast.The iceberg, which is 160 feet tall and 1,640 feet wide, is most likely a chunk that split from a bigger iceberg. The origin of the iceberg is guessed to be from Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf,...
Community-based education and awareness programs minimized the death toll from the recent Samoan tsunami, though there are still ways to improve the warning and evacuation process, according to a team of researchers that traveled to Samoa last month.The team, funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, collected data Oct. 4 through Oct. 11 to document the impacts of the 8.1 earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that occurred on Sept. 29. They examined flow depths, run-up heights,...
In October, the hydraulic benthic interactive sampler HyBIS maintained by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) made ten dives over the Casablanca Seamount, a four-kilometer high seamount located some 300 miles west of Morocco.The deepest dive was onto the Iberian Abyssal Plain at the base of the seamount, at a depth of 4630 meters and the shallowest at 650 meters on the summit. The dives were part of the RRS Discovery cruise 343, during which Autosub 6000 was also tested to...
An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.The results appear in the current issue of the...
"There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel," says Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa following an encompassing geo-archaeological study at the port of Caesarea. "Tsunami events in the Mediterranean do occur less frequently than in the Pacific Ocean, but our findings reveal a moderate rate of recurrence," she says.Dr. Goodman, an expert geo-archaeologist, exposed geological evidence of this by chance....
Latest Physical oceanography Reference Libraries
Coral reefs are submerged structures consisting of calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Coral reefs are colonies of small animals found in marine waters that enclose few nutrients. The majority of coral reefs are constructed from stony corals, which then consist of polyps that come together in groups. The polyps are like small sea anemones, to which they are very closely related. Unlike the sea anemones, coral polyps secrete hard carbonate exoskeletons which provide support and protections...
The sea levels all around the world are rising. Current sea-level rise has the potential to affect human populations and the natural environment. Two key factors have contributed to the observed sea level rise. The first is thermal expansion: as the ocean water warms, it expands. The second is from the influence of land-based ice because of increased melting. The major store of water on land is found in the glaciers and the ice sheets. The rising of sea levels is one of several lines of...
Image Credit: Meteorologist Joshua Kelly When meteorologists are forecasting for ocean-going vessels, there are a few terms that we need to understand. The first term is wavelength. Wavelength is defined as the distance between two crests or between two troughs as seen in the image above. The example above highlights the crest to crest concept of wavelength. The next term that we use is wave height, and to determine this, we first must look at the wave when it passes our station. When...
If you live in or around Billings, Montana the above graph shows you what you can roughly expect when it comes to heating and cooling your house during the ENSO Phases. In Billings during a normal phase of the ENSO your heating degree days pass 900HDD. However, when El-Nino phase is present the monthly average dropped to around 650.5HDD, which is a pretty significant amount especially when you are talking about paying that heating bill. When the La-Nina phase sets up the heating degree...
If you live in or around Bismarck North Dakota the graph shows you what you can roughly expect when it comes to heating and cooling your house during the ENSO Phases. Bismarck North Dakota, with its northern latitude, does have an impact on what type of heating and cooling it sees. During an Normal Phase the HDD for the region hits about 1348 on average. When the region enters into an El-Nino they can expect the amount of HDD’s to decrease to around 970 which really helps cut down on the...
