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 …
The Beaufort Sea is a unique ocean environment that covers approximately 476,000 km² (184,000 sq. mi), spanning the Canadian-U.S. border and stretching across the northern coasts of Alaska, Yukon and the western Northwest Territories. This remote sea has always been dominated by sea ice. However, as the Arctic warms due …
Vast new areas of the ocean floor have been opened up in an accelerating search for valuable minerals including manganese, copper and gold. In a move that brings closer a new era of deep sea mining, the UN's International Seabed Authority (ISA) has issued seven new exploration licences. State-owned and …
Microorganisms and their viruses are increasingly recognized as drivers of myriad ecosystem processes. However, our knowledge of their roles is limited by the inability of culture-dependent and culture-independent (e.g., metagenomics) methods to be fully implemented at scales relevant to the diversity found in nature. Here we combine advances in bioinformatics …
In recent decades, coral reef ecosystems have declined to the extent that reefs are now threatened globally. While many water quality parameters have been proposed to contribute to reef declines, little evidence exists conclusively linking specific water quality parameters with increased disease prevalence in situ. Here we report evidence from …
Litter is now found in even the most remote areas of the oceans, say scientists trying to understand how much rubbish is lying at the bottom of Europe's seas. The new study, published in Plos One, shows for the first time that there seems to be no area of the …
'The public administration ministry will prepare a comprehensive draft and place it before the cabinet again' The cabinet yesterday refused to separately approve three proposed acts for public servants, and instructed the authorities concerned to prepare a comprehensive act by compiling the three drafts. “The drafts of the three different …
There is a rising concern regarding the accumulation of floating plastic debris in the open ocean. However, the magnitude and the fate of this pollution are still open questions. Using data from the Malaspina 2010 circumnavigation, regional surveys, and previously published reports, we show a worldwide distribution of plastic on …
The researchers investigate the balance between two mechanisms that remove carbon from the atmosphere and oceans over long timescales—weathering of terrestrial silicates and alteration of the ocean floor. We show that this balance should strongly influence atmospheric oxygen concentration, since it dictates the delivery rate of the ultimate limiting nutrient …
Governments should set a five-year deadline to crack down on over-fishing and pollution or parts of the oceans may have to be declared off-limits to industrial fishing, an expert commission said on Tuesday. The Global Ocean Commission, a group of senior politicians formed in 2013, urged rescue measures including a …
This paper addresses a longstanding debate regarding the factors that limit nitrogen fixation by diazotrophic plankton—the primary source of an essential nutrient to the ocean. Multiple lines of evidence show that diazotroph growth can be locally limited by the atmospheric iron supply, but large-scale rates of N2 fixation are ultimately …
The ocean’s role in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide on glacial–interglacial timescales remains an unresolved issue in paleoclimatology. Many apparently independent changes in ocean physics, chemistry, and biology need to be invoked to explain the full signal. Recent understanding of the deep ocean circulation and stratification is used to demonstrate that …
A new study by researchers at the University of Bristol and Plymouth Marine Laboratory has shed light on how different species of marine organisms are reacting to ocean acidification. Since the Industrial Revolution, nearly 30 per cent of all the carbon dioxide produced by manmade emissions has been absorbed by …
Every year June 8 is observed as the World Ocean Day to underscore a need to protect the great body of salt water, which covers 70.78 per cent of the earth’s surface. Over two-thirds of the surface of our planet is covered with water. Although this great water expanse is …
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, launched a new global effort on Wednesday to save oceans “under siege” from over-fishing, plastic pollution and climate change. Kerry said he hoped to build momentum for the protection effort at a two-day summit at the State Department next week. The 16-17 June …
For as long as humans have existed, we have relied on oceans to sustain life on earth. Our marine ecosystem is responsible for generating most of the oxygen we breath, regulating our climate, providing much of the world with a vital food source and a pharmacopoeia of potential medicines. Also, …
The economic and ecological role of the high seas should no longer be ignored, argues a new report. The high seas perform the equivalent of billions of dollars of work in removing carbon from our atmosphere and are critical to commercially valuable fisheries, according to the study, which was commissioned …
The United Nations is teaming up with top sailors to conduct scientific research in remote areas of the oceans during a nonstop race around the globe. UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and the Barcelona Foundation for Ocean Sailing, which is organizing the race, announced what they called an “unprecedented alliance between …
Oceans and seas are crucial to sustainable development as they contribute to all aspects of our life on this planet. Although they provide numerous economic, social and environmental benefits, oceans and seas are facing a multitude of local and global challenges caused by human activity and climate change. These include …
Ocean surface waves (sea and swell) are generated by winds blowing over a distance (fetch) for a duration of time. In the Arctic Ocean, fetch varies seasonally from essentially zero in winter to hundreds of kilometers in recent summers. Using in situ observations of waves in the central Beaufort Sea, …
