Ocean – Page 8 – Desdemona Despair

Millennium-scale evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), 400 - 2020. SST-based AMOC reconstructions (light and dark blue) compared to various proxy reconstructions, including land and sea surface temperature reconstructions, sortable silt data, δ18O in benthic foraminifera, δ15N of deep-sea gorgonian corals, and relative abundance of Turborotalita quinqueloba. Since at least 400 AD relatively stable, the AMOC began to decline during the 19th Century which is evident in all proxy records. Around 1950 a phase of particularly rapid decline started that is found in several, largely independent proxies. A short-lived recovery is evident in the 1990s before a return to decline from the mid-2000s. Together these data consistently show that the modern AMOC slowdown is unprecedented in over a thousand years. Graphic: Levke Caesar

March 21, 2021

Gulf Stream System at its weakest in more than a millennium – “This could bring us dangerously close to the tipping point at which the flow becomes unstable”

25 February 2021 (PIK) – Never before in over 1000 years the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), also known as Gulf Stream System, has been as weak as in the last decades. This is the result of a new study by scientists from Ireland, Britain, and Germany. The researchers compiled so-called proxy data – taken […]

A Florida manatee has the word “Trump” carved in its back, causing serious scarring. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the harassment of this manatee. The animal was reported to federal authorities over the weekend of 9 January 2021. The animal was reported swimming in the Blue Hole, the headwaters of the Homosassa River. The USFWS is looking for any information regarding the harassment of this animal. Call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation hotline at 888-404-3922 to report information. Video: Citrus County Chronicle

January 14, 2021

Someone carved “Trump” on a Florida manatee, causing serious scarring – “This abhorrent action goes beyond the bounds of what is considered cruel and inhumane”

By Johnny Diaz 11 January 2021 (The New York Times) – The sighting in Florida this week of a manatee with “Trump” in block letters on its back has prompted an investigation and a plea for help from a nonprofit conservation group. The Center for Biological Diversity said it was offering a $5,000 reward for […]

Map showing the age of sea ice in the Arctic at winter maximum in 2000 (left, week of March 18) and 2020 (right, week of March 21). Ice older than 5 years (white) is very rare today; only a small ribbon remains along the islands of the Canadian Arctic. Age is a stand-in for ice thickness and durability; young ice is thinner and more likely to melt in the summer. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Graphic: NOAA

December 14, 2020

Sea ice loss and extreme wildfires mark another year of Arctic change – “The transformation of the Arctic to a warmer, less frozen, and biologically changed region is well underway”

8 December 2020 (NOAA) – NOAA’s 15th Arctic Report Card catalogs for 2020 the numerous ways that climate change continues to disrupt the polar region, with second-highest air temperatures and second-lowest summer sea ice driving a cascade of impacts, including the loss of snow and extraordinary wildfires in northern Russia. The Arctic Report Card is […]

Aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burning after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, off the southeast tip of Louisiana, 21 April 2010. Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

April 19, 2020

10 years after BP spill: Oil drilled deeper; rules relaxed – “I’m concerned that in the industry, the lessons aren’t fully learned — that we’re tending to backslide”

By Kevin Mcgill and Matthew Brown 18 April 2020 NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters, where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Industry leaders and […]

Observational and modeled climatology (contours) and trends (shading) of the zonal component of the near ocean surface wind. (a) Ensemble trends of the zonal near ocean surface wind based on the NCEP/NCAR, NCEP/DOE and NERA‐Interim reanalysis data sets covering 1979–2018. Stippling indicates regions where the trends pass the 95 percent confidence level (Student's t test). (b) Zonal near ocean surface wind change in the doubled CO2 simulations relative to the pre‐industrial control simulation carried out by AWI‐CM. Stippling indicates areas where the magnitude of the trend is larger than the standard deviation of the local variability. The subpanel at the right side of each graph shows the zonally averaged climatology (blue) and trend (red) of zonal near ocean surface wind. Graphic: Yang, et al., 2020 / Geophysical Research Letters

March 6, 2020

Major wind-driven ocean currents are shifting toward the poles – “Over the past 40 years, all eight wind-driven surface current systems had shifted poleward”

24 February 2020 (AWI) – In the course of the past 40 years, the major wind-driven current systems in the ocean have steadily shifted toward the poles. Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), came to this conclusion after analysing long-term global satellite data on the ocean surface […]

A car and home damaged by Hurricane Dorian show the extent of the damage to the island of Great Abaco even six months after the storm in February 2020. Photo: David Common / CBC

March 2, 2020

Six months after Hurricane Dorian levelled Bahamas, in places it still looks like it just hit – “What do people do? They have nowhere to come back to. When they do come, there is nothing.”

By David Common and Melissa Mancini 1 March 2020 (CBC News) – Ten minutes away from the restored and gleaming cruise ship terminals on Grand Bahama island, just beyond the multi-millionaires’ beach compounds, is the real Bahamas — and it lies in ruins. It’s six months since Hurricane Dorian made landfall on the island nation, […]

Spatial cumulative extents of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. (A) Cumulative NESDIS anomaly daily composites integrated from 20 April 2010 to 21 July 2010. Daily fishing closures are marked with gray lines; the cumulative fishing closure area is marked with a thick dashed yellow line. The black star represents the location of the DWH blowout. (B) Cumulative value of daily average oil concentrations (ppb), integrated across the same time span as (A) and across water depths. Vertical depth layers are 0 to 1 m, 1 to 20 m, and in 20-m increments down to 2500 m. Sediment and water samples with higher-than-background concentration are marked in bright green and dark blue circles, respectively. Red crosses in (B) represent approximate locations of DWH-related oil detections reported in previous studies. Daily fishery closures are marked with black polygons; the cumulative fishery closure area is marked with a dashed thick polygon. AB, Apalachee Bay; DP, Deep Plume; EFS, East Florida Shelf; FK, Florida Keys; LC, Loop Current System; TXS, Texas Shores; WFS, West Florida Shelf. (C) Categorization of the modeled oil spill are as follows: (i) nontoxic, PAH concentrations above background level and smaller than 0.5 and 1 ppb at the surface (depth, 0 to 1 m) and in the water column (depth, >1 m), respectively; (ii) toxic-to-biota and invisible, PAH concentrations 0.5 to 17 ppb at the surface and above 1 ppb in the water column; and (iii) toxic and visible, PAH concentrations above 17 ppb. In (C), categories were computed according to maximal concentrations across time. (D) Duration of toxic concentrations across the domain. (E) LC50 of 12 experiments examining the photoinduced toxicity to blue crab (31), fiddler crab (33), mahi mahi (29, 30), red drum (32), and speckled sea trout (32) (for more details, see table S2). (F) The spatial extent of the toxic concentrations from (E); color codes in (F) are according to bar colors in (E), representing concentrations exceeding LC50. In (F), toxic PAH of 0.5 ppb was concentrations were considered for surface waters only (depth, 0 to 1 m). Graphic: Berenshtein, et al., 2020 / Science Advances

February 17, 2020

The toxic reach of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was much larger and deadlier than previous estimates – “Large areas of the Gulf of Mexico were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures”

By Darryl Fears 12 February 2020 (The Washington Post) – The spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was far worse than previously believed, new research has found. As the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history approaches its 10th anniversary in April, a study by two University of Miami researchers […]

Sea surface temperatures off the coast of Tasmania on November 23, 2010-2017. Data: Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). Graphic: The Sydney Morning Herald

February 2, 2020

Empty nets and tropical fish in Tasmania as climate change hits Southern Ocean

By Royce Millar and Chris Vedelago 31 January 2020 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Rising temperatures and climate change have been blamed for the failure of stocks of some of the most popular eating fish in Australia’s Southern Ocean to recover from declines despite more than a decade of protection. The troubling findings come as […]

External carapace and pereopod exoskeleton of the Dungeness crab megalopae (a) in its undamaged form (b, c) and with dissolution presence ranging from mild (Stage 1; d) to severe (Stage 2; e, f) patterns showing similarity in the structural damages (g) or exposed crystals (h). Indicated is the scale of the measurements (μm). The undamaged megalopae originated from the offshore or northwards habitats characterized by low ∆Ωcal,60 vertical gradients, while the most severely affected megalopae came from the nearshore or coastal habitats with steep ∆Ωcal,60 conditions. Photo: Bednaršek, et al., 2020 / Science of The Total Environment

February 2, 2020

Dungeness crab larvae already showing effects of coastal acidification – “We found dissolution impacts to the crab larvae that were not expected to occur until much later in this century”

23 January 2020 (NOAA) – A new NOAA-funded study has documented for the first time that ocean acidification along the US Pacific Northwest coast is impacting the shells and sensory organs of some young Dungeness crab, a prized crustacean that supports the most valuable fishery on the West Coast. Analysis of samples collected during a […]

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations, 2014-2019 and projected through 2020. Forecast (red) CO2 concentrations at the Mauna Loa observatory, with previous forecasts (blue) are compared to observations (black). The forecast uncertainty range (orange) based on the SST forecast is ± 2 standard deviations. Graphic: Met Office

January 25, 2020

Australia bushfires contribute to big rise in global CO₂ levels in 2020

By Grahame Madge 24 January 2020 (Met Office) – A forecast of the atmospheric concentration of carbon-dioxide shows that 2020 will witness one of the largest annual rises in concentration since measurements began at Mauna Loa, in Hawaii, 1958. During the year the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ is expected to peak above 417 parts per […]