Ocean News

More glaciers in East Antarctica are waking up -- NASA

East Antarctica has the potential to reshape coastlines around the world through sea level rise, but scientists have long considered it more stable than its neighbor, West Antarctica. Now, new detailed NASA maps of ice velocity and elevation show that a group of glaciers spanning one-eighth of East Antarctica’s coast have begun to lose ice over the past decade, hinting at widespread changes in the ocean.

In recent years, researchers have warned that Totten Glacier, a behemoth that contains enough ice to raise sea levels by at least 11 feet (about 3 meters), appears to be retreating because of warming ocean waters. Now, researchers have found that a group of four glaciers sitting to the west of Totten, plus a handful of smaller glaciers farther east, are also losing ice.

 

Human diet causing 'catastrophic' damage to planet -- PHYS.org


The way humanity produces and eats food must radically change to avoid millions of deaths and "catastrophic" damage to the planet, according to a landmark study published Thursday.

The key to both goals is a dramatic shift in the global diet—roughly half as much sugar and red meat, and twice as many vegetables, fruits and nuts, a consortium of three dozen researchers concluded in The Lancet, a medical journal.

 

2018 Fourth Warmest Year in Continued Warming Trend, According to NASA, NOAA

2018 Fourth Warmest Year in Continued Warming Trend, According to NASA https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/2018-fourth-warmest-year-in-continued-warming-trend-according-to-nasa-noaa

 

Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'

 

A Troubling Discovery in the Deepest Ocean Trenches

For the past decade, Jamieson, a marine biologist at Newcastle University, has been sending vehicles to the bottom of marine trenches, which can be as deep as the Himalayas are tall. Once there, these landers have collected amphipods—scavenger relatives of crabs and shrimp that thrive in the abyss......

The team found PCBs galore. Some amphipods were carrying levels 50 times higher than those seen in crabs from one of China’s most polluted rivers.....

Brooks eventually found plastic fibers and fragments in 72 percent of the amphipods that the team collected, from all six trenches that they had surveyed. In the least polluted of these sites, half of the amphipods had swallowed at least one piece of plastic. In the 6.8-mile-deep Mariana Trench, the lowest point in any ocean, all of the specimens had plastic in their gut......

 

It looks like there is an oil slick headed for the French coast after this sinking. Oil Slick Spotted Near Sunken Grande America Off France – gCaptain https://gcaptain.com/oil-slick-spotted-near-sunken-grande-america-off-france/ Maybe the strong winds will stir up enough of a sea to break it down before the coast is reached.

 

An Elusive Whale Is Found All Around the World

 

Below the Energy Observer, an recycled 1983 built racing maxi catamaran (sail), lengthened four times in previous lives, so in her fifth live now, link says 100% wind and solar energy for propulsion and live aboard electric power, with surplus energy storage in batteries and hydrogen tanks for propulsion and live aboard power for when natural sources aren't sufficiently available, currently circumnavigating the globe, 6 years 50 countries planning with 101 stopovers for promotion of renewable energy, it's mostly in those port times when the surplus energy is planned to be stored as safety margin for the crossings.

I've posted a bunch of links and videos about it on the thread on the thread Gyrocopter rotor instead of canvas sail ? → post #28 ~ 32

↓ boat info starts at 1:28​

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2-metre sea level rise 'plausible' by 2100 | PHYS.org

 

Comprehensive global analysis shows a warmer ocean will hold lower animal abundance, with fish and mammals to suffer the most

Story highlights

• A comprehensive global-ocean assessment shows that marine animals such as fish, invertebrates and marine mammals will decline from increasing temperatures
• Marine animals, many of which are already of conservation concern, could show a particular vulnerability
• In contrast, many polar regions around the Arctic and Antarctica could show biomass increases

The extent of projected losses can be constrained by emission reductions, with only a 5% decline under a strong mitigation scenario, but 17% under business-as-usual emissions by the end of the 21st century. Notably, the magnitude of this climate change effect was similar in an ocean with and without fishing pressure....

Mapping the projected changes in the global ocean revealed that biomass will decline in many temperate to tropical ocean regions where people are highly dependent on seafood supply and where marine biodiversity is already affected by cumulative human impacts. Here, climate change is creating another layer of stress onto marine ecosystems and human societies alike...

 

With More Storms and Rising Seas, Which U.S. Cities Should Be Saved First?

After three years of brutal flooding and hurricanes in the United States, there is growing consensus among policymakers and scientists that coastal areas will require significant spending to ride out future storms and rising sea levels — not in decades, but now and in the very near future. There is also a growing realization that some communities, even sizable ones, will be left behind.

 

There's info about damage to Styrofoam and research* about cleaning up all kinds of polystyrene foam garbage on the thread: What bores holes in styrofoam

* all originally published on September 21, 2015 as far as posted there till now, that's before post #28 at the time of this note.

 

Scientists capture historic video of a giant squid

For the first time, a live giant squid had been filmed in U.S. waters. The video was captured by a team of researchers on an expedition funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who were studying the impacts of light-deprivation on deep sea creatures who live in the "midnight zone," 3,280 feet below the surface.

 

CO2 emissions are on track to take us beyond 1.5 degrees of global warming

A new study shows just how hard it may be to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial times.

The world’s existing power plants, industrial equipment, vehicles and other CO₂-emitters are on track to pump out enough carbon dioxide to blow past that target by midcentury, researchers report July 1 in Nature. Add in future power plants that are already planned, permitted or under construction, and we could emit enough by 2033 to raise average global atmospheric temperatures by 1.5 degrees, the researchers say.

If we want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, then “we cannot invest more in fossil fuel power or infrastructure,” says Thorsten Mauritsen, a physical climate scientist at Stockholm University who was not involved with the work. “Everything we do from now has to change direction and not use fossil fuels.”....

 

50^th anniversary of Leave them a flower by Wally Whyton, thread Songs About Boats, post #345, 3^rd video.