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Categories: Geoscience: Oceanography, Offbeat: Earth and Climate

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A study shows that an irreversible loss of the ice sheets, and a corresponding acceleration of sea level rise, may be imminent if global temperature cannot be stabilized below 1.8 degrees Celsius.

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What role could rifted margins play in the transition to a carbon-neutral economy? Researchers summarize the current state of knowledge about the so-called rifting of continents. Rifting is the term researchers use to describe the process by which continental plates break and new oceans are formed.

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Scientists found that some reefs in the tropical Pacific Ocean could maintain high coral cover into the second half of this century by shuffling the symbiotic algae they host. The findings offer a ray of hope in an often-dire picture of the future of coral reefs worldwide.

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We love our chicken. We love our salmon. Thanks to how we farm these two popular proteins, their environmental footprints are surprisingly similar.

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Santa Barbara Channel's natural oil seeps are a beach-goer's bane, flecking the shores with blobs of tar. But the leaking petroleum also creates fascinating geologic and biologic features. About 10 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, several jet-black mounds interrupt the featureless sea floor. These asphalt volcanoes, virtually unique in the world, provide a rare habitat in a region known for its underwater biodiversity.

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Hydrothermal vents have been identified as a previously undiscovered source of dissolved black carbon in the oceans, furthering the understanding of the role of oceans as a carbon sink.

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There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometers of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ice.

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Humans are artificially expanding cities' coastlines by extending industrial ports and creating luxury residential waterfronts. Developers have added over 2,350 square kilometers of land (900 square miles, or about 40 Manhattans) to coastlines in major cities since 2000, according to a new study. The study reports the first global assessment of coastal land reclamation, which is the process of building new land or filling in coastal water bodies, including wetlands, to expand a coastline. The researchers used satellite imagery to analyze land changes in 135 cities with populations of at least 1 million, 106 of which have done some coastline expansion.

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Through DNA analyses, researchers have identified that there are still juvenile coastal cod off the west coast of Sweden. However, it is still difficult to find any mature adult cod in the area.

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Ongoing climate change driven by greenhouse gas emissions is often discussed in terms of global average warming. For example, the landmark Paris Agreement seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C, relative to pre-industrial levels. However, the extent of future warming will not be the same throughout the planet. One of the clearest regional differences in climate change is the faster warming over land than sea. This 'terrestrial amplification' of future warming has real-world implications for understanding and dealing with climate change.

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Protected marine areas are one of the essential tools for the conservation of natural resources affected by human impact -- mainly fishing --, but, are they enough to recover the functioning of these systems? A study now highlights the limitations of marine reserves in restoring food webs to their pristine state prior to the impact of intensive fishing.

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New Zealand is one of only a few island nations that could continue to produce enough food to feed its population in a nuclear winter, researchers have found.

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New global modelling predicts the devastating socioeconomic impacts of future extreme coastal flooding for developing nations caused by climate change, with Asia, West Africa and Egypt facing severe costs in the coming decades.

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Winter is coming to an end; the last nights of below zero temperatures are here. In the morning, one still spots the occasional icicle on a gutter or car bumper. When you look at these icicles carefully, you may notice that they show a characteristic pattern of ripples -- always around one centimetre wide. What causes these ripples? Using an icicle machine of their own design, physicists and chemists investigated this question, and discovered that salt plays an important part in the formation process of the ripples.

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In the course of five years, citizens who went on sailing cruises to the Arctic surveyed and collected plastic debris that had washed up on the shores of Svalbard. This has now been analyzed. According to the findings, one third of the plastic debris which still bore imprints or labels allowing an analysis of their origin came from Europe, and much of that number from Germany.

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Researchers have pinpointed two intervals when ice and ocean conditions would have been favorable to support early human migration from Asia to North America late in the last ice age, a new paper shows.

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The Arctic is rapidly losing sea ice, even during winter months when temperatures are below freezing and ice should be recovering from the summer melt. A new study found powerful storms called atmospheric rivers are increasingly reaching the Arctic in winter, slowing sea ice recovery and accounting for a third of all winter sea ice decline, according to a team led by Penn State scientists.

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Good quality indoor air is crucial to our well-being, while impurities in the air can compromise our working capacity and health. Researchers have developed a new method for measuring indoor air quality, making use of fluorescent strains of nematodes.

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Sneaker waves are likely fueled by a specific type of wave condition generated by far-off storms and paired with just the right conditions closer to shore, a new study has found.

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By working together, dolphins and net-casting fishers in Brazil each catch more fish, a rare example of an interaction by two top predators that is beneficial to both parties, researchers have concluded following 15 years of study of the practice.