Estimated disruptions to Earth’s great elemental cycles

23 March 2016 (Desdemona Despair) – Back in 2011, Desdemona was asked by a local church to give a presentation on the condition of the world’s oceans (State of the Oceans 2011 video; pdf slide deck; PowerPoint). As part of the talk, Des wanted estimates for human disturbances to the great cycles of elements on […]

Graph of the Day: Simulated catastrophic decline of plankton in warming oceans

By Yadigar Sekerci and Sergei Petrovskii12 November 2015 (Bulletin of Mathematical Biology) – We have studied the oxygen–plankton dynamics using a mathematical model that takes into account oxygen production in photosynthesis, plankton respiration, and the effect of zooplankton predation on phytoplankton. The model is described by a system of three coupled ODEs in the nonspatial […]

Global warming could cause extinction of oxygen-producing ocean phytoplankton – ‘This would likely result in the mass mortality of animals and humans’

1 December 2015 (University of Leicester) – Falling oxygen levels caused by global warming could be a greater threat to the survival of life on planet Earth than flooding, according to researchers from the University of Leicester. A study led by Sergei Petrovskii, Professor in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leicester’s Department of Mathematics, […]

‘Report card’ gives Mississippi River basin a D+ for infrastructure condition – ‘Multiple failures may be imminent’

By Jim Salter14 October 2015 ST. LOUIS (AP) – A report card is out on the Mississippi River basin, and the grade is not good: a D+, with an aging transportation infrastructure topping the list of concerns. The report by America’s Watershed Initiative, released Wednesday in St. Louis, assesses categories such as the abundance of […]

Lack of oxygen killing marine life in waters of Washington state’s Hood Canal – ‘It’s a dead zone anywhere east of Sister’s Point to Belfair’

By Hal Bernton28 August 2015 (Seattle Times) – A lack of oxygen in southern Hood Canal is killing fish, crab and other marine life, according to Seth Book, a biologist with the Skokomish Tribe who has been monitoring the marine waterway. Through the month of August, Book and other Skokomish staff have observed dead English […]

Scientists fear toxic algae bloom spreading on Pacific coast – Stretching from southern California to Alaska, this year’s blooms thought to be the largest ever recorded

By Ryan Schuessler1 August 2015 ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Al Jazeera) – The toxic algae blooms in the Pacific Ocean stretching from southern California to Alaska — already the largest ever recorded — appear to have reached as far as the Aleutian Islands, scientists say. “The anecdotal evidence suggests we’re having a major event,” said Bruce Wright, […]

Ocean dead zones swirl off Africa, threatening coastlines with mass fish kills

By Robert Scribbler5 May 2015 (RobertScribbler.wordpress.com) – The world ocean is now a region of expanding oxygen-deprived dead zones. It’s an upshot of a human-warmed ocean system filled with high nutrient run-off from mass, industrialized farming, rising atmospheric nitrogen levels, and increasing dust from wildfires, dust storms, and industrial aerosol emissions. Warming seas hold less […]

Floodwaters causing new Gulf of Mexico dead zone off Texas

By Rusty Surette18 June 2015 COLLEGE STATION (KBTX) – Record rainfall totals in many parts of Texas the past few weeks means a record amount of freshwater pouring into the Gulf of Mexico – as high as 10 times the normal rate – and that could lead to huge problems for marine life and commercial […]

Biologist: Dead zones in the ocean threaten our most important food fish – Oxygen minimum zone ‘to start in North Africa and go all the way down to the tip of South Africa’

By Lynne Rossetto Kasper9 May 2015 (Splendid Table) – Three years ago, I interviewed Eric Prince, a research fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center. He and his colleagues had found that a huge dead zone, an area of the ocean with very little oxygen, had developed in the […]

Scientists to analyze ‘the Blob’ at Scripps Oceanography Workshop

30 April 2015 (Scripps Institution) – A workshop on an unusually warm pool of North Pacific Ocean water and associated conditions will take place May 5 and 6 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Participants in the 2014-2015 Pacific Anomalies Science and Technology Workshop will include federal, non-federal, state and local scientists and […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial