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 …
It is possible to trigger ocean oxygen depletion, choking the world’s seas. The suffocation zone – the region of the deep sea floor that is now oxygen-depleted – could double in a century, because of human-triggered climate change and other actions. But don’t panic: the last time the oceans lost …
This policy brief, prepared by SIWI and Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), is a contribution to the discussions and activities at UNFCCC meetings in order to improve understanding and application of gender and water knowledge in the climate arena. The interface between freshwater and oceans captures the vital development …
While global ocean health has remained relatively stable over the past five years, individual countries have seen changes, according to a study published July 5, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Benjamin Halpern from University of California Santa Barbara, USA and colleagues. The Ocean Health Index has been …
Growing international and national focus on quantitatively measuring and improving ocean health has increased the need for comprehensive, scientific, and repeated indicators to track progress towards achieving policy and societal goals. The Ocean Health Index (OHI) is one of the few indicators available for this purpose. Here we present results …
As humans put ever more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, the Earth heats up. These are the basics of global warming. But where does the heat go? How much extra heat is there? And how accurate are our measurements? These are questions that climate scientists ask. If we can answer …
Fears that progress towards some Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may undermine achievements in others are largely unfounded, a science-based analysis of their interactions has concluded. The SDGs were designed with linkages between the health, environmental, and social-economic aspects of development in mind. But it is unclear whether they will reinforce …
President Ali Bongo Ondimba announced to the UN Ocean Conference that the government of Gabon has created a network of marine protected areas the size of Costa Rica. Gabon pledges ‘massive’ protected network for oceans The network of marine protected areas covers some 53,000 square kilometers (20,463 square miles) of …
As world leaders criticise the United States for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, scientists are trying to work out exactly what a warmer world will mean. That includes researchers in Senegal, who are making precise measurements of the ocean to try to predict how it will change. And …
The Ocean Atlas illustrates the important role played by the seas and the global maritime ecosystems – not just for people living on the coasts but for all of us. The Atlas provides up-to-date insights into the state of the seas that form a basis of human livelihood and into …
On World Oceans Day, 8 June, UNESCO will present the first ever global stock-taking of the oceanographic sciences at the United Nations' Ocean Conference, at the UN in New York from 5 to 9 June. Other UNESCO events at the conference will focus on underwater cultural heritage and marine World …
Global average temperatures could pass 1.5C above pre-industrial levels within the next decade, new projections suggest. The timing of when we actually hit the 1.5C threshold will depend heavily on a natural cycle in the Pacific Ocean, the study finds, which can either dampen or accelerate global temperature rise. The …
Fungi have recently been found to comprise a significant part of the deep biosphere in oceanic sediments and crustal rocks. Fossils occupying fractures and pores in Phanerozoic volcanics indicate that this habitat is at least 400 million years old, but its origin may be considerably older. A 2.4-billion-year-old basalt from …
The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, adopted under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, provides the basis for taking effective action to curb biodiversity loss across the planet by 2020—an urgent imperative. Yet, Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, which encompass 10% of the planet’s surface, are excluded from assessments …
A new study on how ocean currents transport floating marine debris is helping to explain how garbage patches form in the world’s oceans. Researchers from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and colleagues developed a mathematical model that simulates the motion of small spherical …
The legacy and reach of anthropogenic influence is most clearly evidenced by its impact on the most remote and inaccessible habitats on Earth. Here we identify extraordinary levels of persistent organic pollutants in the endemic amphipod fauna from two of the deepest ocean trenches (>10,000 metres). Contaminant levels were considerably …
There has been a progressive deepening of winter convection in the Labrador Sea since 2012, with the individual profile maximum depth exceeding 1800 m since 2014 and reaching 2100 m in 2016. This increase, during repeated positive phases of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), resembles that during the formation …
The ocean's uptake of carbon dioxide increased during the 2000s. Models reveal that this was driven primarily by weak circulation in the upper ocean, solving a mystery of ocean science.
The ocean is the largest sink for anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2), having absorbed roughly 40 per cent of CO2 emissions since the beginning of the industrial era. Recent data show that oceanic CO2 uptake rates have been growing over the past decade, reversing a trend of stagnant or declining carbon …
Ocean acidification poses a range of threats to marine invertebrates; however, the emerging and likely widespread effects of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels on marine invertebrate behaviour are still little understood. Here, we show that ocean acidification alters and impairs key ecological behaviours of the predatory cone snail Conus marmoreus. …
Ongoing ocean acidification is widely reported to reduce the ability of calcifying marine organisms to produce their shells and skeletons. Whereas increased dissolution due to acidification is a largely inorganic process, strong organismal control over biomineralization influences calcification and hence complicates predicting the response of marine calcifyers. Here we show …
