Latest Seawater Stories

Carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the oceans as a result of water pollution by nutrients — a major source of this greenhouse gas that gets little public attention — is enhancing the unwanted changes in ocean acidity due to atmospheric increases in CO2. The changes may already be impacting commercial fish and shellfish populations, according to new data and model predictions published today in ACS's journal, Environmental Science & Technology. William G. Sunda and Wei-Jun Cai point...

WOODINVILLE, Wash., July 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- You've heard of the war on drugs. But did you know there's a war on salt? While some of the country's leading politicians, government agencies and medical organizations deem salt the "number-one enemy" to health and want to ban it from dishes and diets everywhere, dissenting voices are cropping up in major news outlets like The New York Times and CNN. Mark Zoske, CEO of SaltWorks®, Inc., agrees that now is the time to speak out....

Seawater circulation pumps hydrogen and boron into the oceanic plates that make up the seafloor, and some of this seawater remains trapped as the plates descend into the mantle at areas called subduction zones. By analyzing samples of submarine volcanic glass near one of these areas, scientists found unexpected changes in isotopes of hydrogen and boron from the deep mantle. They expected to see the isotope "fingerprint" of seawater. But in volcanoes from the Manus Basin they also discovered...

The need for fresh water is expanding every day and over one-third of the world's population currently inhabit areas struggling to keep up with the demand for water. Researchers estimate that by 2025, that number will nearly double. Digging deeper or pumping water from further upstream in the water table is only a short-term solution that often leads to disputes between countries and water conservation and reuse projects have only limited effectiveness.A new study from Yale University and the...

Salt is essential to human life. Most people don't know, however, that salt -- in a form nearly the same as the simple table variety -- is just as essential to Earth's ocean, serving as a critical driver of key ocean processes. While ancient Greek soothsayers believed they could foretell the future by reading the patterns in sprinkled salt, today's scientists have learned that they can indeed harness this invaluable mineral to foresee the future -- of Earth's climate.The oracles of modern...

In this month's Physics World, Jason Reese, Weir Professor of Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics at the University of Strathclyde, describes the role that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could play in the desalination of water, providing a possible solution to the problem of the world's ever-growing population demanding more and more fresh drinking water.Global population projections suggest that worldwide demand for water will increase by a third before 2030.But with more than a billion people...

When NASA's salt-seeking Aquarius instrument ascends to the heavens this June, the moon above its launch site at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base won't be in the seventh house, and Jupiter's latest alignment with Mars will be weeks in the past, in contrast to the lyrics of the song from the popular Broadway musical "Hair." Yet for the science team eagerly awaiting Aquarius' ocean surface salinity data, the dawning of NASA's "Age of Aquarius" promises revelations on...

Acantharian cyst sedimentationSpore-like reproductive cysts of enigmatic organisms called acantharians rapidly sink from surface waters to the deep ocean in certain regions, according to new research. Scientists suspect that this is part of an extraordinary reproductive strategy, which allows juveniles to exploit a seasonal food bonanza.The research shows that deep sedimentation of cysts during the spring delivers significant amounts of organic matter to the ocean depths, providing a...

The chemical composition of our oceans is not constant but has varied significantly over geological time. In a study published this week in Science, researchers describe a novel method for reconstructing past ocean chemistry using calcium carbonate veins that precipitate from seawater-derived fluids in rocks beneath the seafloor. The research was led by scientists from the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES) hosted at the National Oceanography Centre,...

GEORGE TOWN, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, Nov. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Consolidated Water Co. Ltd. (Nasdaq: CWCO) today announced that Mr. Wil Pergande has been elected non-executive Chairman of the Company's Board of Directors. Mr. Pergande is President of WF Pergande Consulting LLC, a Florida-based engineering consulting firm that specializes in seawater and brackish water conversion, fluid dynamics, chemical process and separation technologies. He has over 40 years of experience...