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 …
What if the way things smell started to change? What if food inexplicably lost its aroma and your house no longer had its familiar homely scent? It would certainly be off-putting, but you’d probably manage. However, many animals depend on their sense of smell much more than we do, so …
Could virtual reality (VR) — immersive digital experiences that mimic reality — save the environment? Well, that may be a bit of a stretch. But researchers say that it could perhaps promote better understanding of nature and give people empathetic insight into environmental challenges. “Virtual reality can give everyone, regardless …
Antarctic sea ice is constantly on the move as powerful winds blow it away from the coast and out toward the open ocean. A new study shows how that ice migration may be more important for the global ocean circulation than anyone realized. A team of scientists used a computer …
A Dutch foundation has developed floating barriers to try to collect trash from the world's oceans, and will launch a 100 meter-long prototype in the North Sea this week to see how it fares during storms. The Ocean Cleanup Foundation's 21-year-old Chief Executive Boyan Slat, who first had the idea …
The first time professor Sherri Mason cut open a Great Lakes fish, she was alarmed at what she found. Synthetic fibers were everywhere. Under a microscope, they seemed to be “weaving themselves into the gastrointestinal tract”. Though she had been studying aquatic pollution around the Great Lakes for several years, …
The Atlas of Ocean Wealth is the largest collection to date of information about the economic, social and cultural values of coastal and marine habitats from all over the world. It is a synthesis of innovative science, led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), with many partners around the world. Through …
Mexico, Canada and US collaborate on report that concludes the three nations will have to dramatically ramp up efforts to reach 10% protection goal North America is far from reaching national and international targets for protecting oceans, according to a first-of-its-kind report released on Wednesday. The Dare to Be Deep …
Changes to the grounding line, where grounded ice starts to float, can be used as a remotely-sensed measure of ice-sheet susceptibility to ocean-forced dynamic thinning. Constraining this susceptibility is vital for predicting Antarctica's contribution to rising sea levels. We use Landsat imagery to monitor grounding line movement over four decades …
Biodegradable plastic does not mean a perfect solution to ocean waste problems, according to an environmental scientist. A United Nations environmental scientist warned the public that biodegradable plastics, shopping bags, and bottles are a false solution to the current problem of litter in the ocean. According to a UN report …
Human activities have substantially changed the world’s oceans in recent decades, altering marine food webs, habitats and biogeochemical processes. Cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish and octopuses) have a unique set of biological traits, including rapid growth, short lifespans and strong life-history plasticity, allowing them to adapt quickly to changing environmental conditions. There …
Gas hydrates stored on continental shelves are susceptible to dissociation triggered by environmental changes. Knowledge of the timescales of gas hydrate dissociation and subsequent methane release are critical in understanding the impact of marine gas hydrates on the ocean–atmosphere system. Here we report a methane efflux chronology from five sites, …
The contributions from terrestrial water sources to sea-level rise, other than ice caps and glaciers, are highly uncertain and heavily debated. Recent assessments indicate that groundwater depletion (GWD) may become the most important positive terrestrial contribution over the next 50 years, probably equal in magnitude to the current contributions from …
The biological carbon pump is the process by which CO2 is transformed to organic carbon via photosynthesis, exported through sinking particles, and finally sequestered in the deep ocean. While the intensity of the pump correlates with plankton community composition, the underlying ecosystem structure driving the process remains largely uncharacterized.
Nitrogen oxides are essential for the formation of secondary atmospheric aerosols and of atmospheric oxidants such as ozone and the hydroxyl radical, which controls the self-cleansing capacity of the atmosphere. Nitric acid, a major oxidation product of nitrogen oxides, has traditionally been considered to be a permanent sink of nitrogen …
We are looking on now as warming oceans stress the world's coral reefs, prompting them to turn white, including our Great Barrier Reef. We also know that our oceans have become about 30 per cent more acidic since pre-industrial times as they absorb the billions of tonnes a year of …
Planktonic communities are shaped through a balance of local evolutionary adaptation and ecological succession driven in large part by migration. The timescales over which these processes operate are still largely unresolved. Here we use Lagrangian particle tracking and network theory to quantify the timescale over which surface currents connect different …
India suffers from major heatwaves during March-June. The rising trend of number of intense heatwaves in recent decades has been vaguely attributed to global warming. Since the heat waves have a serious effect on human mortality, root causes of these heatwaves need to be clarified. Based on the observed patterns …
The impact of the Indian and Atlantic oceans variability on El Niño–Southern-Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon is investigated through sensitivity experiments with the SINTEX-F2 coupled model. For each experiment, we suppressed the sea surface temperature (SST) variability in either the Indian or Atlantic oceans by applying a strong nudging of the SST …
Africa’s “Blue word” is made of vast lakes and rivers and an extensive ocean resource base. The Blue Economy can play a major role in Africa’s structural transformation, sustainable economic progress, and social development. The largest sectors of the current African aquatic and ocean based economy are fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, …
A manipulative experiment in which a reef is alkalinized in situ shows that calcification rates are likely to be lower already than they were in pre-industrial times because of acidification.
