Precipitation plays an important role in glaciers and ice sheet behaviour. To establish the relationship between atmospheric climate variation, precipitation patterns and glacier and ice sheet behaviour beyond the observable past, a new MARUM-led study created a precipitation record for southern Greenland. The authors found that positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phases over at least the last circa 5,000 years consistently resulted in cooler but wetter conditions over southern Greenland. This in turn likely influenced local glacier advance or retreat, as well as the mass of the glaciers themselves. Their findings are now published in Nature Communications.

Two new studies led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography reveal how underwater acoustic enrichment — the playback of sounds from healthy reefs — can help spur the recovery of degraded coral reefs and their fish communities.

Researchers have created an aquatic soft robot inspired by marine invertebrates called feather stars. The feather star robot is able to move through the water in all three dimensions, powered by only two actuators.

Some of the giant marine reptiles that ruled the seas during the age of dinosaurs were better built for surprise attacks, while their relatives were better suited to chasing prey through open water, according to a Rutgers-led study.

These animals, known as mosasaurs, were a group of lizards adapted to life in the ocean. Researchers reconstructed the bodies of four kinds of mosasaurs from their fossil skeletons, then applied principles of physics to estimate how quickly each could surge forward with a single powerful sweep of its tail. The research was published in the latest edition of Current Biology.