ocean – Page 4 – Desdemona Despair

Map showing trends of early-warning indicators of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapse. a, Linear trends of the corrected restoring rate λ estimated from the HadISST dataset assuming autocorrelated noise. b, Same as (a) but for the EN4 salinity dataset. c, Linear trends of the variance estimated from the HadISST dataset. d, Same as (c) but for the EN4 salinity dataset. e, Linear trends of the AC1 estimated from the HadISST dataset. f, Same as (e) but for the EN4 salinity dataset. Note the high positive values in the northern Atlantic and the subpolar gyre region in particular for λ and AC1, but also in the southern Atlantic ocean where a salinity pileup has recently been associated with an AMOC slowdown. Graphic: Boers, 2021 / Nature Climate Change

August 22, 2021

Gulf Stream could be veering toward irreversible decline, a new analysis warns – Atlantic current “approaching a critical threshold beyond which the circulation system could collapse”

By Ben Turner 6 August 2021 (LiveScience) – One of the most crucial ocean current systems for regulating the Northern Hemisphere’s climate could be on the verge of total collapse due to climate change, a new study has revealed. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream and is responsible for moderating […]

Thousands of dead mussels are seen at the waterline in British Columbia, killed by the deadly heatwave 2021. More than one billion marine animals along Canada’s Pacific coast are likely to have died from the record heatwave, experts warn, highlighting the vulnerability of ecosystems unaccustomed to extreme temperatures. Photo: Christopher Harley / The Guardian

July 18, 2021

Heat dome probably killed 1 billion marine animals on Canada coast in 2021 – “A lot of species are not going to be able to keep up with the pace of change”

By Leyland Cecco 8 July 2021 TORONTO (The Guardian) – More than one billion marine animals along Canada’s Pacific coast are likely to have died from last week’s record heatwave, experts warn, highlighting the vulnerability of ecosystems unaccustomed to extreme temperatures. The “heat dome” that settled over western Canada and the north-western US for five days pushed temperatures […]

Abstract in video format for the paper titled: "Global changes in oceanic mesoscale currents over the satellite altimetry record", Martinez Moreno, J., Hogg, A. McC., England, M. H., Constantinou, N. C., Kiss, A. E., and Morrison, A. K. (2021) Global changes in oceanic mesoscale currents over the satellite altimetry record, 22 Apr 2021. Video: Martinez Moreno, et al., 2021 / Nature Climate Change

April 25, 2021

Changes to giant ocean eddies could have “devastating effects” globally – Scientists find “a global-scale reorganization of the ocean’s energy over the past three decades”

By Graham Readfearn 22 April 2021 (The Guardian) – Twirling and meandering ocean currents that help shape the world’s climate have gone through a “global-scale reorganisation” over the past three decades, according to new research. The amount of energy in these ocean currents, which can be from 10km to 100km across and are known as […]

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 […]

Simulated high temperatures in Florida on Tuesday, 14 April 2020 by the American NAM model. Graphic: WeatherBell

April 19, 2020

Miami is shattering heat records during a wildly-warm start to 2020 – Most of Florida has endured record heat in the past four weeks

By Matthew Cappucci 15 April 2020 (The Washington Post) – Florida is supposed to be warm. After all, it’s, well, Florida. But temperatures in the Sunshine State have been shattering records and rivaling typical readings during the heart of summer. Miami even endured its earliest heat wave on record last week, when it hit at […]

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 […]

The Blue Acceleration: global trends in human exploitation of ocean resources. Graphic: Jouffray, et al., 2020 / One Earth

February 26, 2020

The “blue acceleration”: Study shows humans’ surging incursions into the sea

By Grace Dungey 13 February 2020 (Mongabay) – Humanity has depended on the ocean for millennia. Today, however, the rush to the sea is occurring with unprecedented diversity and intensity, propelled by population growth and demand for diminishing terrestrial resources. A study published in January in the new journal One Earth analyzed 50 years of data on 18 kinds […]

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 […]

The tail of a male grey whale that stranded near Victoria, B.C. in April 2019, with skin eaten by an infestation of cyamids, or whale lice. Photo: Fisheries and Oceans Canada

December 28, 2019

In 2019, 214 grey whales washed up dead on the West Coast of North America – “They get eaten alive”

By Lisa Johnson 28 December 2019 (CBC News) – The first grey whale found dead in B.C. last year was in such rough shape that someone called to report it was tangled up in a big pink buoy. The pink wasn’t plastic, officials learned when they arrived to tow the skinny male to shore near […]

The water at Balmoral beach in New South Wales has turned black after Australia's recent deadly bushfires, 9 December 2019. Local woman Imogen Brennan shared videos of the beach on social media. Video: Imogen Brennan / BBC

December 28, 2019

Video: Bushfire ash washes up on Australian beach

24 December 2019 (news.com.au) — Ash and burned debris from trees washed up on beaches on the New South Wales south coast as weeks-old bushfires burned on Thursday, 24 December 2019. Two major uncontained bushfires had threatened coastal communities and forced evacuations in the area. The Currowan Fire had burned over 200,00 hectares since breaking […]