Researchers at the University of Maine have discovered that planktonic lobster larvae preferentially feed on Calanus finmarchicus, a tiny, calorie-rich zooplankton species, during one of the most vulnerable stages of their lives. Using a newly developed DNA probe, researchers found that 30% of larval and post-larval lobsters sampled had DNA of Calanus finmarchicus in their digestive tracts, whereas this species comprised only a few percent of the available zooplankton. Scientists have also observed declines in both the availability of this key food source, meaning lobster larvae have to depend on less nutritious resources, threatening their chance of survival.

Tide levels can vary by almost a metre across a single bay, according to a new study that uses decades of satellite images to measure tides at the scale of individual beaches.

Researchers at Technische Universität München and the University of Oxford have led the development of a new technique that can estimate tides along the coast at intervals of just 100 metres. This provides a level of local detail that is difficult to capture using existing tide gauges and satellite measurements.

The study has been published today (25 August) in Nature Communications: Earth and Environment.

Adrian Marchetti joins University of Victoria (UVic) as BC Leadership Chair in Marine and Ecosystem and Global Change to advance research in phytoplankton, climate change and ocean health. 

A research team set out to discover how the apparent temperature, or “feels like” temperature, over the ocean differs from the apparent temperature on land and found that a pronounced land-sea contrast is evident.

Using MODIS observations from 2003 to 2024, researchers evaluated candidate regions and seasonal windows for marine cloud brightening (MCB) worldwide by examining how key cloud properties varied with aerosol optical depth (AOD). Among five representative ocean regions, the North Pacific during boreal autumn (SON) showed a favorable coordinated pattern: cloud fraction and cloud optical thickness were positively sensitive to AOD, whereas cloud droplet effective radius was negatively sensitive. The study provides an observational basis for further evaluation of MCB candidate regions and seasonal windows. The findings were published in Science China Earth Sciences.

In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences, a team of researchers conducted a series of CESM2 ensemble simulations under SSP2-4.5 to examine the impact of marine cloud brightening (MCB) on terrestrial drought. By injecting sea salt aerosols over certain subtropical ocean regions, they found that MCB could produce about 0.9°C global cooling and mitigate global land drying trend via reduced potential evapotranspiration by 2100 relative to that of SSP2-4.5. However, regional differences in drought response to MCB are evident, indicating the underlying complexity of terrestrial hydrological responses to artificial climate intervention. It sheds new light on the potential and risks of solar geoengineering for drought mitigation.

A recent study published in National Science Review, based on Chang'e-6 (CE6) farside samples, has shown that the lunar mantle lacks a clear compositional dichotomy. The farside anorthositic crust is more magnesian, whereas late-stage products of the lunar magma ocean appear thinner on the farside. To reconcile these hemispheric variations spanning from the mantle to the crust, a coherent model of lateral thermal convection within the magma ocean of the tidally-locked Moon has been proposed.

Scientists carbon-dated more than 7,500 marine fossils from ocean beds around the world and used that data to determine which environmental factors are most responsible for mixing together fossils from different time periods in the same stratum.