EurekAlert! - Oceanography

Everything's coming up corals

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science) Two University of Miami students have received prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships from the NSF for their doctoral work on coral reefs. In fall they will be joined by Ross Cunning, who also received an Honorable Mention in the same NSF competition. They will all be part of the team working in the lab of 2008 Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation Dr. Andrew Baker who is helping to develop groundbreaking techniques to enhance the thermal tolerance of corals, and help them to survive dangerously warming oceans.

Climate models overheat Antarctica, new study finds

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated warming in Antarctica, new research concludes. The study can help scientists improve computer models and determine if Earth's southernmost continent will warm significantly this century, a major research question because of Antarctica's potential impact on global sea-level rise.

Stressed seaweed contributes to cloudy coastal skies, study suggests

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of Manchester) Scientists at the University of Manchester have helped to identify that the presence of large amounts of seaweed in coastal areas can influence the climate.

ESA contributes to ocean carbon cycle research

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(European Space Agency) The Earth's oceans play a vital role in the carbon cycle, making it imperative that we understand marine biological activity enough to predict how our planet will react to the extra 25,000 million tons of carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the atmosphere annually.

Diatoms discovered to remove phosphorus from oceans

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(Georgia Institute of Technology) Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a new way that phosphorus is naturally removed from the oceans -- its stored in diatoms. The discovery opens up a new realm of research into an element that's used for reproduction, energy storage and structural materials in every organism. The research appears in the May 2, 2008, edition of the journal Science.

Wiley-Blackwell to launch Journal of Flood Risk Management

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(Wiley-Blackwell) Wiley-Blackwell, the scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons Inc. today announced the launch of Journal of Flood Risk Management.

Scripps Oceanography Research pegs ID of red tide killer

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of California - San Diego) Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have identified a potential "red tide killer."

Oxygen depletion: A new form of ocean habitat loss

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of California - San Diego) Scientists confirm computer model predictions that oxygen-depleted zones in tropical oceans are expanding, possibly because of climate change.

Wakame waste

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(Inderscience Publishers) Bacteria that feed on seaweed could help in the disposal of pollutants in the world's oceans, according to a new study by researchers in China and Japan. The discovery is reported in the International Journal of Biotechnology, an Inderscience publication.

Prof. David Kisailus studies engineering and invention on the half-shell

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of California - Riverside) Marine snails, sea urchins and other animals from the sea are teaching researchers in UC Riverside's Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering how to make the world a better place.

Scientists discover new ocean current

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(Georgia Institute of Technology) Scientists at Georgia Tech have discovered a new climate pattern, the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. This pattern explains, for the first time, changes in the water important in helping commercial fishermen understand fluctuations in the fish stock. They're also finding that as the Earth is warming, large fluctuations in these factors could help climatologists predict how oceans will respond in a warmer world. The research appears in the April 30 edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

CU-Boulder researchers forecast 3-in-5 chance of record low Arctic sea ice in 2008

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of Colorado at Boulder) New University of Colorado at Boulder calculations indicate the record low minimum extent of sea ice across the Arctic last September has a three-in-five chance of being shattered again in 2008 because of continued warming temperatures and a preponderance of younger, thinner ice.

New whale detection buoys will help ships take the right way through marine habitat

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have teamed up with an international energy company and federal regulators to listen for and help protect endangered North Atlantic right whales in New England waters.

Warning buoys for right whales installed along Massachusetts Bay

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(Cornell University Communications) Endangered North Atlantic right whales are safer along Massachusetts Bay's busy shipping lanes this spring, thanks to a new system of smart buoys. The buoys recognize whales' distinctive calls and route the information to a public Web site and a marine warning system, giving ships the chance to avoid deadly collisions.

Scientists reveal presence of ocean current 'stripes'

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of California - San Diego) More than 20 years of continuous measurements and a dose of "belief" yield discovery of subtle ocean currents that could dramatically improve forecasts of climate, ecosystem changes

AGU journal highlights -- April 22, 2008

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(American Geophysical Union) In this issue: Cooling a climate disagreement; Southern skies sensitive to ozone variation; Do surges trigger geomagnetic substorms?; Model warns early of Indonesia, Australia drought; Corals reveal oceans' carbon reservoir age; Unusual tremor jiggles Mexican zone.

Can certain metals repel sharks from fishing gear?

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service) Sharks in captivity avoid metals that react with seawater to produce an electric field, a behavior that may help fishery biologists develop a strategy to reduce the bycatch of sharks in longline gear. Shark bycatch is an increasing priority worldwide given diminished populations of many shark species, and because sharks compete with target species for baited lines, reducing fishing efficiency and increasing operating costs.

UC biology prof traces his roots to the first Earth Day

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of Cincinnati) George Uetz, professor of biological sciences in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, was a Master's student in the Department of Entomology and Applied Ecology at the University of Delaware in Newark. That wasn't his only passion."I was a student activist in the anti-war movement as well as the environmental movement of the time," Uetz admits.

AMS April science highlights

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(American Meteorological Society) This release contains story ideas and tips about upcoming AMS meetings, papers in our peer-reviewed journals, and other happenings in the atmospheric and related sciences community.

Arctic ice more vulnerable to sunny weather, new study shows

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) The shrinking expanse of Arctic sea ice is increasingly vulnerable to summer sunshine. New research, by scientists at NCAR and Colorado State University, finds that unusually sunny weather contributed to last summer's record loss of Arctic ice, while similar weather conditions in past summers did not have comparable impacts.

The Antarctic deep sea gets colder

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) The Antarctic deep sea gets colder, which might stimulate the circulation of the oceanic water masses. This is the first result of the Polarstern expedition of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association that has just ended in Punta Arenas/Chile.

FISH-BOL: NOAA researchers help build a global reference library of DNA barcodes

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service) Bruce Collette, a zoologist at NOAA's National Systematics Laboratory located in the Smithsonian Institution, and NSL colleagues are participating in FISH-BOL, the global Fish Barcode of Life Initiative, which plans to collect at least five representatives each of all 30,000 plus marine and freshwater species in the world. FISH-BOL is part of the global Consortium for the Barcode of Life, started in 2003 to barcode everything from fishes, mushrooms and flowers, to microbes, insects and animals of every description.

Lakes of meltwater can crack Greenland's ice and contribute to faster ice sheet flow

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) Researchers have for the first time documented the sudden and complete drainage of a lake of meltwater from the top of the Greenland ice sheet to its base. From those observations, scientists have uncovered a plumbing system for the ice sheet, where meltwater can penetrate thick, cold ice and accelerate some of the large-scale summer movements of the ice sheet.

While stability far from assured, Greenland perhaps not headed down too slippery a slope

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of Washington) Lubricating meltwater that makes its way from the surface down to where a glacier meets bedrock turns out to be only a minor reason why Greenland's outlet glaciers accelerated their race to the sea 50 to 100 percent in the 1990s and early 2000s, scientists say. Their work also shows that surface meltwater is reaching bedrock farther inland under the Greenland Ice Sheet, something scientists had speculated was happening but had little evidence.

Fishing throws targeted species off balance, Scripps study shows

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

(University of California - San Diego) Fishing activities can provoke volatile fluctuations in the populations they target, but it's not often clear why.