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 …
Aquanaut Sylvia Earle, co-leader of the final mission to the world's only undersea lab, says the oceans need protecting more than ever – don't pull funding.
Atlantic salmon populations are reported to be declining throughout its range, raising major management concerns. Variation in adult fish abundance may be due to variation in survival, growth, and timing of life history decisions. Given the complex life history, utilizing highly divergent habitats, the reasons for declines may be multiple …
There is increasing concern regarding the role of climate change in driving bacterial waterborne infectious diseases. Here we illustrate associations between environmental changes observed in the Baltic area and the recent emergence of Vibrio infections and also forecast future scenarios of the risk of infections in correspondence with predicted warming …
The discovery that marine algal blooms deposit organic carbon to the deep ocean answers some — but not all — of the questions about whether fertilizing such blooms is a viable strategy for mitigating climate change.
Fertilization of the ocean by adding iron compounds has induced diatom-dominated phytoplankton blooms accompanied by considerable carbon dioxide drawdown in the ocean surface layer. However, because the fate of bloom biomass could not be adequately resolved in these experiments, the timescales of carbon sequestration from the atmosphere are uncertain. Here …
Yeosu, South Korea: The massive oil spill in ’95 that caused destruction of sea life in the waters of Yeosu, is a thing of the past. Seventeen years later, Yeosu’s coastal waters are brimming with marine life as the city hosts ‘The Living Ocean and Coast: Diversity of Resources and …
Oceans' rising acid levels have emerged as one of the biggest threats to coral reefs, acting as the "osteoporosis of the sea" and threatening everything from food security to tourism to livelihoods, the head of a US scientific agency said Monday. The speed by which the oceans' acid levels has …
The state of knowledge and outstanding issues with respect to the global mean energy budget of planet Earth are described, along with the ability to track changes over time. Best estimates of the main energy components involved in radiative transfer and energy flows through the climate system do not satisfy …
The contributions in this article examining some of the specific extreme weather or climate events of 2011 demonstrate the importance of understanding the interplay of natural climate variability and anthropogenic climate change on their occurrence.
Rising ocean temperatures have reduced rates of coral calcification and increased rates of coral mortality, thereby negatively impacting the health of coral reef ecosystems. Nevertheless, the response of corals to thermal stress seems to vary spatially across the reef environment. Here, we show that between 1982 and 2008 in the …
This is the 22nd annual edition of the State of the Climate series, from its origin as NOAA’s Climate Assessment, and the 17th consecutive year of its association with the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Its primary goals are to document the weather and climate events of the year …
Increasing discharge of pollutants and booming offshore human activity, such as oil exploration, are worsening China's fragile marine environment, according to an annual report released by the country’s ocean watchdog. The severely polluted sea area surged to 44,000 square kilometers in China in 2011 from 25,000 sq km in 2003, …
Environmentalists have urged PM Manmohan Singh to take lead in ocean protection - an environmental issue that has so far failed to receive focused attention during negotiations and consultations at climate change meetings. For the Rio+20 convention that the PM is slated to address on June 21, the host Brazil …
This report on Sustainable Development in Pakistan prepared for the Conference gives a resume of progress made by the country in the implementation of Agenda and outcome of the World Summit on Sustainable development held at Johannesburg in 2002. It also highlights the challenges and constraints that the country has …
Large-scale increases in upper-ocean temperatures are evident in observational records. Several studies have used well-established detection and attribution methods to demonstrate that the observed basin-scale temperature changes are consistent with model responses to anthropogenic forcing and inconsistent with model-based estimates of natural variability. These studies relied on a single observational …
Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of …
Measurements from several ocean cores reveal that ocean warmth persisted throughout the late Miocene epoch despite CO2 levels of only 200–350 p.p.m.v., probably driven by a deep thermocline that isolated climate responses from CO2 variations.
egotiators meeting in New York struggled to achieve demonstrable progress on narrowing down an outcome document to forward to this month's Rio+20 summit, sparking questions among observers about what to expect at the high-profile UN gathering.
As a significant contribution to Rio+20, the 5th Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5) builds on previous reports and continues to provide analysis of the state, trends and outlook of the global environment. As a significant contribution to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the fifth Global Environment Outlook …
Climate simulations based on an ocean model may hold the key to understanding why existing climate models have failed to deliver a clear picture of ocean circulation during the last ice age.
