Storm track of Hurricane Idalia before it made landfall in Florida. The warm sea surface temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico fueled the storm, allowing it to strengthen to a Category 4 hurricane from a Category 1 just hours before making landfall on 30 August 2023. Graphic: The New York Times

2023 hurricane season marked by storms that “really rapidly intensified”

By William B. Davis and Judson Jones 2 December 2023 (The New York Times) – The 2023 hurricane seasons in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific came to an end this week, with both basins experiencing an above average number of storms, fueled by extremely warm ocean temperatures. The two basins had a combined 37 storms, […]

(a) Linear trends in sea surface temperature (SST) (°C per decade) over the period 1982–2022. (b) Area-averaged time series of SST anomalies (°C) relative to the 1982–2022 reference period for the areas indicated in grey dashed lines in 5(a). Source: Derived from the Copernicus Marine Service remote sensing products available at https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00168 (for 1982–2021) and https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00165 (for 2022). Graphic: WMO

Pacific island sea levels rising faster than global average, WMO says – Economic damage in Southwest Pacific due to flooding in 2022 was $8.5 billion, almost triple compared to the previous year

By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber 17 August 2023 GENEVA (Reuters) – Sea levels in the South-West Pacific are rising faster than the global average, threatening low-lying islands while heat damages marine ecosystems, the U.N. meteorological agency said on Friday. In its State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2022 report, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said […]

This map shows global temperature anomalies for July 2023 according to the GISTEMP analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Temperature anomalies reflect how July 2023 compared to the average July temperature from 1951-1980. Graphic: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies

NASA announces July 2023 was hottest month on record – “The science is clear this isn’t normal”

By Sheri Walsh 14 August 2023 (UPI) – July 2023 was the hottest month on record in 143 years, as Americans felt “the effects of the climate crisis,” scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York announced Monday. According to NASA, July 2023 was on average 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than any […]

A sick sea lion and her pup are shown recovering from domoic acid poisoning at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, California, on 6 July 2023. During the summer of 2023, the center cared for sea lions that were sickened by a historically bad algal bloom along California’s Coast. Photo: Yannick Peterhans / USA TODAY

“Death coming out of the ocean”: Red tide killing California sea lions, dolphins – “I have been a marine mammal veterinarian for 35 years, and this is definitely the worst in my professional lifetime”

By Amanda Lee Myers 8 July 2023 (USA TODAY) – Jalapeño the sea lion turned up on a crowded California beach in a daze, experiencing seizures and heavily pregnant. Instead of giving birth in a remote location like sea lions prefer, Jalapeño had her pup on Southern California’s Hermosa Beach on a busy Saturday, surrounded by throngs […]

A man carries his mother as he arrives at an emergency ward at a hospital in Ballia District in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, 21 June 2023. Photo: Adnan Abidi / REUTERS

Climate nears point of no return as land, sea temperatures break records, experts say – “We’ve run out of time because change takes time”

By David Stanway 30 June 2023 SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea. As envoys gathered in Bonn in early June […]

Tuvalu’s Minister for Justice, Communication, and Foreign Affairs, Simon Kofe, gives a COP26 statement while standing in the ocean in Funafuti, Tuvalu 5 November 2021. Photo: Tuvalu Ministry of Justice, Communication, and Foreign Affairs / REUTERS

What happens to a people when their land disappears – “We could lose our status as a state”

By Jonathan Watts 27 June 2023 (The Guardian) – Small island nations would rather fight than flee, but rising sea levels have prompted apocalyptic legal discussions about whether a state is still a state if its land disappears below the waves. The Pacific Islands Forum, which represents many of the most vulnerable countries, has invited international […]

Satellite view of Super Typhoon Mawar capture by the Japanese satellite Himawari on Friday morning local time, 26 May 2023. Photo: RAMMB / CIRA

Super Typhoon Mawar strengthens into most powerful storm on Earth in more than 2 years – Record-setting storm is among the 10 most powerful on record globally

By Matthew Cappucci 26 May 2023 (The Washington Post) – The most powerful storm system on Earth in more than two years, Super Typhoon Mawar, is raging through the Pacific, stirring up 70-foot waves amid 200 mph gusts as the atmospheric buzz saw cruises over warm ocean waters. The meteorological monstrosity could maintain Category 5-equivalent […]

Coastal anemones found side-by-side with pelagic (open ocean) gooseneck barnacles and pelagic bryozoans on a derelict fish crate recovered from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Photo: Linsey Haram / Smithsonian Institution

Ocean plastic pollution reaches “unprecedented” levels – The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now so huge and permanent that a coastal ecosystem is thriving on it – “The problem is getting bigger and bigger by the minute”

By Ivana Kottasová 18 April 2023 (CNN) – Scientists have found thriving communities of coastal creatures, including tiny crabs and anemones, living thousands of miles from their original home on plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a 620,000 square mile swirl of trash in the ocean between California and Hawaii. In a new study published in the Nature […]

World map showing sea surface temperatures as of 14 April 2023, with warm colors indicating higher temperatures. Ocean surface temperatures hit an all-time high in April 2023, breaking every record since satellite measurements began in the 1980s. Graphic: ClimateReanalyzer.org

The surface of the ocean is now so hot it’s broken every record since satellite measurements began

By Stephanie Pappas 14 April 2023 (Live Science) – Ocean surface temperatures have hit an all-time high this month, breaking every record since satellite measurements began in the 1980s. Temperatures reached a global average of 69.98 Fahrenheit (21.1 degrees Celsius) in the first days of April. The previous record of 69.9 F (21 degrees C) […]

Estimated ocean parasite populations in the Puget Sound, 1880-2019. The count per host of ocean parasites that obligately require three or more hosts declined through time, while that of two- and one-host parasites remained stable. Shown are model predictions between the years 1880 and 2019 from phase 1 analysis. Predictions are for the “average” parasite species within each group (i.e., within 1-host parasites, 2-host parasites, and 3+-host parasites) where average is defined as “the parasite species with the abundance that is closest to the average abundance of all parasite species.” Graphic: Wood, et al., 2023 / PNAS

Warming oceans have decimated marine parasites, and that’s not a good thing – “If this can happen unnoticed in an ecosystem as well studied as this one, where else might it be happening?”

By Hannah Hickey 9 January 2023 (UW News) – More than a century of preserved fish specimens offer a rare glimpse into long-term trends in parasite populations. New research from the University of Washington shows that fish parasites plummeted from 1880 to 2019, a 140-year stretch when Puget Sound — their habitat and the second […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial