The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
Nitrogen fixation rates of the globally distributed, biogeochemically important marine cyanobacterium Trichodesmium increase under high carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in short-term studies due to physiological plasticity. However, its long-term adaptive responses to ongoing anthropogenic CO2 increases are unknown. Here we show that experimental evolution under extended selection at projected future …
The deep ocean was once assumed to be lifeless and barren. Today we know that even the deepest waters teem with living creatures, some of them thought to be little changed from when life itself first appeared on the planet. The deep ocean is also essential to the earth’s biosphere—it …
Plastic pollution in the ocean is a rapidly emerging global environmental concern, with high concentrations (up to 580,000 pieces per km2) and a global distribution, driven by exponentially increasing production. Seabirds are particularly vulnerable to this type of pollution and are widely observed to ingest floating plastic. We used a …
Dust particles from the deserts of Mongolia and northern China are blown eastward to the Pacific during strong storms, where they then settle in the ocean for phytoplankton to feed on. These dust particles contain many valuable minerals, including nutrient-rich iron. You may have heard some mixed opinions about the …
The US government has urged the international community to focus more on the impact of climate change on the oceans, amid growing concern over changes affecting corals, shellfish and other marine life. The US will raise the issue at United Nations climate talks in Paris later this year. The UN’s …
Glacial episodes have been linked to Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, but cooling itself may not be solely responsible for these extinctions. Teratological (malformed) assemblages of fossil plankton that correlate precisely with the extinction events can help identify alternate drivers of extinction. Here we show that metal poisoning may have caused these …
It turns out that we may soon experience the "end" of our world's oceans. Scientists have found that even optimistic estimates for what might be achieved at December's Climate Chance Conference will not be enough to save the world's coral reefs. The aim for the COP21 climate conference is to …
Man-made global warming has triggered a reversal of the natural ocean cooling that has occurred over the past 1,800 years, a study has found. Ocean temperatures have fallen significantly over the past two millennia due to the cooling influence of successive volcanic eruptions on the surface temperatures of the Earth, …
Forty years after the ocean floor was first mapped by hand, a team of Australian researchers has created the first digital map of the entire sea floor. Made by the University of Sydney's School of Geosciences and National ICT Australia (NICTA), the map can be used to plot the planet's …
This is the first ever digital map of the Earth's seafloor, revealing deep ocean basins to be much more complex than previously thought. The last complete map was hand-drawn in the 1970s. But now, following half a century of research collating around 15,000 samples from research ships, the University of …
As temperatures rise, some of the organic carbon stored in Arctic permafrost meets an unexpected fate—burial at sea. As many as 2.2 million metric tons of organic carbon per year are swept along by a single river system into Arctic Ocean sediment, according to a new study an international team …
Oceanographers are studying whether climate change is contributing to an unprecedented bloom of toxic algae that spans the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada, raising health concerns and leading to multimillion-dollar income losses from closed fisheries. The bloom, which emerged in May, stretches thousands of miles from the …
Knowing the patterns of distribution of sediments in the global ocean is critical for understanding biogeochemical cycles and how deep-sea deposits respond to environmental change at the sea surface. We present the first digital map of seafloor lithologies based on descriptions of nearly 14,500 samples from original cruise reports, interpolated …
Attempts to save the world from global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while continuing to burn fossil fuels are unlikely to prevent the oceans from dying as a result of a build-up of acidity, scientists have found. Some commentators have suggested a “plan B” if climate talks …
Anthropogenic CO2 is rapidly causing oceans to become warmer and more acidic, challenging marine ectotherms to respond to simultaneous changes in their environment. While recent work has highlighted that marine fishes, particularly during early development, can be vulnerable to ocean acidification, we lack an understanding of how life-history strategies, ecosystems …
Actor’s foundation auctions prizes including private concerts with Elton John and arctic expeditions with Prince Albert II of Monaco to reach sum Leonardo DiCaprio’s foundation on Wednesday raised more than $40m to help preserve and save the environment. The amount was raised through the auction of luxury items and unique …
Relief of iron (Fe) limitation in the Southern Ocean during ice ages, with potentially increased carbon storage in the ocean, has been invoked as one driver of glacial–interglacial atmospheric CO2 cycles. Ice and marine sediment records demonstrate that atmospheric dust supply to the oceans increased by up to an order …
Some animals have the remarkable capacity to acclimate across generations to projected future climate change however, the underlying molecular processes are unknown. We sequenced and assembled de novo transcriptomes of adult tropical reef fish exposed developmentally or transgenerationally to projected future ocean temperatures and correlated the resulting expression profiles with …
Phytoplankton form the foundation of the marine food web and regulate key biogeochemical processes. These organisms face multiple environmental changes1, including the decline in ocean pH (ocean acidification) caused by rising atmospheric pCO2 (ref. 2). A meta-analysis of published experimental data assessing growth rates of different phytoplankton taxa under both …
Spatially extensive and persistent drought episodes have repeatedly influenced human history, including the 'Strange Parallels' drought event in monsoon Asia during the mid-18th century. Here we explore the dynamics of sustained monsoon failure using observed and tree-ring reconstructed drought patterns and a 1300-year pre-industrial community earth system model control run. …
