Trump signs executive order on offshore drilling and marine sanctuaries

By Nathan Rott and Merrit Kennedy27 April 2017 (NPR) – President Trump signed an executive order Friday that aims to expand offshore drilling for oil and gas, in a move welcomed by the oil and gas industry and greeted with alarm by environmental groups. “Renewed offshore energy production will reduce the cost of energy, create […]

The Arctic Ocean has become a garbage trap for 300 billion pieces of plastic – “Most of the plastic that we have disposed in the ocean is still now in transit to the Arctic”

By Chris Mooney 19 April 2017 (The Washington Post) – Drifts of floating plastic that humans have dumped into the world’s oceans are flowing into the pristine waters of the Arctic as a result of a powerful system of currents that deposits waste in the icy seas east of Greenland and north of Scandinavia. In […]

Ruins, not reefs: How global warming is fast-forwarding coral science – “Almost none of this reef has made it through 2015 and 2016. It’s the wholesale destruction of the reef.”

By Robinson Meyer11 April 2017 (The Atlantic) – At about the same moment that millions of Americans sat staring at their television or laptop or phone—watching the results from the presidential election stream in, seeing state after state called for Donald Trump—Kim Cobb was SCUBA diving near the center of the Pacific Ocean. She did […]

Global warming making oceans more toxic by increasing algae blooms – “The distribution, frequency, and intensity of these events have increased across the globe”

STONY BROOK, N.Y., 26 April 2017 (SBU) – Climate change is predicted to cause a series of maladies for world oceans including heating up, acidification, and the loss of oxygen.  A newly published study published online in the April 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, titled, “Ocean warming since 1982 […]

Study: Warm Atlantic waters contribute to sea ice decline – “I first went to the Arctic in 1969, and I’ve never seen anything like this”

By Chris Mooney6 April 2017 (The Washington Post) – There’s something special — and very counterintuitive — about the Arctic Ocean. Unlike in the Atlantic or Pacific, where the water gets colder as it gets deeper, the Arctic is upside-down. The water gets warmer as it gets deeper. The reason is that warm, salty Atlantic-originating […]

New estimate of ocean heat finds more warming – “The planet is warming quite a lot more than we thought”

10 March 2017 (NCAR) – The oceans may be storing 13 percent more heat than previously estimated, according to a new study co-authored by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The finding, published in the journal Science Advances, is based on a new analysis of how ocean temperatures have changed since 1960. […]

Ocean microbes making global warming worse

By John von Radowitz27 February 2017 (Irish Independent) – Microbes are generating a vast pool of marine methane that is contributing to global warming, scientists have confirmed. Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London, traced the source of methane in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Sediment collected from the ocean floor, where there is very little […]

“The blob” of abnormal conditions boosted Western U.S. ozone levels in 2015

By Hannah Hickey15 February 2017 (University of Washington) – An unusually warm patch of seawater off the West Coast in late 2014 and 2015, nicknamed “the blob,” was part of an offshore pattern that had cascading effects up and down the coast. Its sphere of influence was centered on the marine environment but extended to […]

Banned chemicals from the 1970s found in the deepest reaches of the ocean

14 February 2017 (University of Aberdeen) – A study, from the University of Aberdeen and Newcastle University has uncovered the first evidence that man-made pollutants have now reached the farthest corners of our earth. Sampling amphipods from the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana and Kermadec trenches – which are over 10 kilometres deep and 7,000 km apart […]

416 beached whales propel New Zealanders into frenzied rescue mission – “The young ones were the worst. Crying is the only way to describe it.”

By Katie Mettler 10 February 2017 (The Washington Post) – The writer, photographer and tour guide gathered at a quarter past six Friday morning, their destination Farewell Spit. The dainty, fingerlike peninsula cups the northern edge of shallow Golden Bay, one of New Zealand’s most picturesque natural scenes and a premiere place to witness the […]

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