1.
Scientists reconstruct 200 year old ocean records for insight on tomorrow
Oceanographers
are set on recreating past ocean ecosystems for insight on how greenhouse gas
emissions will affect future atmospheric and surface temperatures in relation
to climate change. By studying decades of previous ocean biodiversity,
temperature, and current circulation data, researchers can piece together what
prehistoric oceans might have looked like. Humans began documenting ocean
observations around 1880 from shipping routes running from North America to
Europe. However, these records don’t give a full global picture of ocean
observations, so many scientists are turning to models, such as the Simple
Ocean Data Assimilation sparse input (SODAsi), to give a more accurate depiction
of global ocean climate history spanning the previous two centuries. To learn
more about SODAsi, click here.
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2.
Phytoplankton blooms occurring 4 weeks earlier than usual
A 13
yearlong study recently completed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
(WHO) has uncovered how phytoplankton species are impacted by rising sea
temperatures. The scientific article, published in Science this month, focused
on the phytoplankton species, Synechococcus,
a small bacterium commonly found in marine environments. Increasing ocean
temperatures off the coast of Massachusetts saw the annual blooms of Synechococcus occurring up to four weeks
sooner than average. Researchers concluded the early arrive of the blooms is a
result of the cells dividing faster than normal due to the warmer conditions.
Read more about the impact this can have on marine ecosystems here.
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Milky white plankton blooms growing off the coast
of New Zealand are adding fuel to the fire that climate change is already affecting
the temperature of our oceans. Oceanographers from the Victoria University of
Wellington studied the blooms using ship observations and satellite data to
match up algae blooms with a similar warming occurrence that happened around
130,000 years ago, when ocean temperatures rose 1 to 2 degrees. Their study,
published in Global and Planetary Change,
cites how important these organisms are to marine environments besides showing
changes, plankton also helps regulate our ecosystems by extracting carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere. Read more about the research study here.
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4.
Ocean robots to the rescue!
Robots
are being utilized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) to study how much heat the ocean has the ability to absorb, helping to
offset the global effects of climate change. Argo floats, the fleet of robots
measuring the oceans’ heat content, has been collecting data for over a decade
now. NOAA scientists now have a more detailed picture of how much heat has been
taken up by the world’s upper oceans. In a report released by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress claims that
93 percent of human induced warming has been mitigated by the oceans so far.
Read more about the Argo project here.
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5.
Dissolved Organic Carbon holds a key to understanding the ocean
Scientists
have known for decades that our oceans are a huge carbon sink, holding roughly
700 billion tons of carbon, but they have just now begun studying how it is
produced and impacted by changes in climate. Researchers from the University of
Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science are looking at how dissolved
organic carbon (DOC) helps to sustain ocean life using over 15 years of data
collected during international scientific cruises that map how the DOC is
distributed throughout the Atlantic Ocean. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, data shows the
production of DOC at the ocean’s surface can be estimated by measuring the
levels of nutrients found in the euphotic zone of the ocean. Read more about
the publication here.
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