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| Scientists Find Good News About Methane Bubbling Up From the Ocean Floor Near Santa Barbara |
| Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is emitted in great quantities as bubbles from seeps on the ocean floor near Santa Barbara. About half of these bubbles dissolve into the ocean, but the fate of this dissolved methane remains uncertain. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered that only one percent of this dissolved methane escapes into the air – good news for the Earth's atmosphere. |
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| CLIMATE CHANGE COULD RELEASE OLD CARBON LOCKED IN ARCTIC SOILS, RESEARCHERS SAY. |
| The Arctic Ocean receives about ten percent of Earth's river water and with it some 25 teragrams [28 million tons] per year of dissolved organic carbon that had been held in far northern bogs and other soils. Scientists had not known the age of the carbon that reaches the ocean: was it recently derived from contemporary plant material, or had it been locked in soils for hundreds or thousands of years and therefore not part of Earth's recent carbon cycle? |
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| CONSERVING FISH MAY BACKFIRE ON BIRDS |
| A proposal to suddenly stop fishing cod in the North Sea to give dwindling fish stocks a chance to replenish has been questioned by international research. |
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| GOAL OF OCEAN 'IRON FERTILIZATION' SAID STILL UNPROVED |
| After a decade of small-scale testing, researchers are still uncertain whether seeding ocean waters with tanker loads of iron particles could alleviate global warming, said a Duke University scientist involved in the studies. |
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| DECLINING SHARKS |
| The transformation of terrestrial and coastal ecosystems by humans is well known, but only recently have the impacts of anthropogenic forces in the open ocean been recognized. In particular, intense exploitation by industrial fisheries is rapidly changing oceanic ecosystems by drastically reducing populations of many marine species. For most oceanic species we lack a historical perspective. |
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| NASA SPIES ON PENGUIN HOTSPOTS |
| Satellite studies have revealed that scattered patches of ice-free sea off the Antarctic coast generate much of the food source on which penguins ultimately rely for survival. |
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| BENDS MAY BE CULPRIT IN WHALE STRANDINGS |
| Gas filled bubbles discovered in the damaged tissues of stranded whales provide new evidence that military sonar can give whales the bends.
An international team of scientists led by Dr P. D. Jepson of the Zoological Society of London report their findings in today’s issue of the journal Nature. |
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| WHALING MAY HAVE DECIMATED SEALS, SEA LIONS |
| Crashes in seal, sea lion and sea otter populations in some parts of the world may have occurred because intense commercial whaling forced killer whales to turn to new prey for food, a new U.S. study suggests. |
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| OCEAN PLANT LIFE SLOWS DOWN AND ABSORBS LESS CARBON |
| Plant life in the world's oceans has become less productive since the early 1980s, absorbing less carbon, which may in turn impact the Earth's carbon cycle, according to a study that combines NASA satellite data with NOAA surface observations of marine plants. |
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| HUNGARY'S SHRINKING LAKE FUELS CLIMATE FEARS |
| Lake Balaton, central Europe's biggest freshwater lake and one of Hungary's biggest tourist attractions, is shrinking - prompting warnings of an ecological and economic catastrophe that may be linked to global warming. |
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| ANCIENT SUPERFLOOD BROUGHT CLIMATE CHAOS |
| A catastrophic 'superflood' following the rupture of a massive glacier-dammed lake in Canada at the end of the Ice Age probably plunged the world into centuries of climatic chaos. |
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| ATMOSPHERIC MERCURY HAS DECLINED - BUT WHY? |
| The amount of gaseous mercury in the atmosphere has dropped sharply from its peak in the 1980s and has remained relatively constant since the mid 1990s. This welcome decline may result from control measures undertaken in western Europe and North America, but scientists who have just concluded a study of atmospheric mercury say they cannot reconcile the amounts actually found with current understanding of natural and manmade sources of the element. |
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| SINKING ATOLLS TRIGGER PAPUAN EVACUATION PLANS |
| Papua New Guinean authorities are trying to convince thousands of Polynesians to abandon their homes on two atolls that appear to be sinking into the Pacific Ocean. |
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| CAMERA HELPS TRACK WHALE SHARK'S HABITS |
| A camera is to be fitted to a whale shark off the Western Australian coast to track the species' breeding ground. Scientists say the sharks are under threat because they are a delicacy in other parts of the world. |
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| THE ARCTIC PERENNIAL SEA ICE COULD BE GONE BY END OF THE CENTURY |
| A NASA study finds that perennial sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster than previously thought--at a rate of 9 percent per decade. If these melting rates continue for a few more decades, the perennial sea ice will likely disappear entirely within this century, due to rising temperatures and interactions between ice, ocean and the atmosphere that accelerate the melting process. |
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| PHYTOPLANKTON IMPLICATED IN GLOBAL WARMING |
| The ubiquitous one-celled ocean organisms, phytoplankton, play a significant and previously unknown role in warming the planet by capturing and absorbing the Sun's radiation, American researchers have found. |
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| ROBOTS POWERED BY THE OCEAN ITSELF |
| They call them "gliders," but these move through water instead of air. Two new robotic gliders - autonomous underwater vehicles - powered by changes in their own buoyancy or by different temperature layers in the ocean - will be tested operationally off Southern California this winter. Both gliders were developed with support from the Office of Naval Research. |
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| AIR POLLUTION CLEANSED THROUGH OCEAN CLOUD PROCESSES, SAY HEBREW UNIVERSITY SCIENTISTS |
| Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have demonstrated that sea spray over the oceans contributes to cleansing air that has been polluted overland. The air pollution is washed down by rain, which occurs because the rain-suppressing effect of such pollution is significantly neutralized. An article on this research appears in the online magazine Science Express, published today. |
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| SATELLITES SEE BIG CHANGES SINCE 1980S IN KEY ELEMENT OF OCEAN'S FOOD CHAIN |
| Since the early 1980s, ocean phytoplankton concentrations that drive the marine food chain have declined substantially in many areas of open water in Northern oceans, according to a comparison of two datasets taken from satellites. At the same time, phytoplankton levels in open water areas near the equator have increased significantly. Since phytoplankton are especially concentrated in the North, the study found an overall annual decrease in phytoplankton globally. |
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| SCIENTISTS FIND CAUSE OF DEAD CRABS, FISH OFF COAST. |
| An unusual combination of oceanic and atmospheric events may be to blame for a mysterious and sudden die-off of numerous crabs, fish and invertebrate animals off the central Oregon coast during the past two weeks. |
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| THUNDERSTORMS ARE AFFECTED BY POLLUTION |
| A NASA-funded researcher has discovered that tiny airborne particles of pollution may modify developing thunderclouds by increasing the quantity and reducing the size of ice crystals within them. These modifications may affect the cloud’s impact on the "radiation budget," the amount of radiation that enters and leaves the Earth. |
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| SILENT EARTHQUAKE IN HAWAII OFFERS CLUES TO EARLY DETECTION OF CATASTROPHIC TSUNAMIS |
| A slow-moving earthquake recently observed on Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano could become a model for predicting catastrophic tsunamis in the Pacific, according to a new study by geophysicists from Stanford and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). |
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| GLOBAL SEA LEVELS LIKELY TO RISE HIGHER IN 21ST CENTURY THAN PREVIOUS PREDICTIONS |
| New calculations by a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher indicate global sea levels likely will rise more by the end of this century than predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001. |
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| WARM AND GETTING WARMER... |
| The Arctic ice cap is shrinking… that much is known with certainty. Over the past century, the extent of the winter pack ice in the Nordic Seas has decreased by about 25%. Last winter the Bering Sea was effectively ice-free, which is unprecedented, and if this big melt continues, some say the formerly ice-locked Arctic will have open sea lanes as soon as 2015. By 2050, the summertime ice cap could disappear entirely. |
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| POLLUTION THREATENS WATER CYCLE |
| A haze of sunlight-absorbing particles above the Indian Ocean may be grinding the water cycle to a slow halt, says an international study.
The tiny aerosol particles - pollutants from burning fossil fuel and vegetation - cut down the amount of heat reaching the ocean, which initiates the cycling of water vapour. The researchers think the aerosols may be 'spinning down' the hydrological cycle of the planet. |
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| SCIENTISTS CHART IRON CYCLE IN OCEAN |
| Scientists at the University of California have found that sunlight plays an important role in cycling iron in the ocean and making it available to marine life. |
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| SIMULATION GIVES A LONG-TERM GLOBAL FORECAST OF THE WORLD OCEAN LEVEL |
| Australian scientists think that the World Ocean and the Earth’s annual temperature raise will be the main factor facilitating the sea level increase over the entire 21st century. A scientist from the CSRO society supposes that coastal stormy waves will be a threat to people’s life as well as to coastal constructions and beaches. Over the period from 1990 to 2100, the sea average level is expected to increase by 9 to 89 centimeters, while the average temperature on the earth’s surface will rise by 1.4 to 5.8° C. |
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| A NEW GREAT ARCTIC NAVIGABLE ROUTE |
| Scientists are concerned that, due to global warming, the Arctic coastal area will start thawing. At the same time, a new navigable route between Europe and Asia could be established.
Amazed tourists, cruising exactly to the North Pole (90° of latitude north of the equator), didn’t see any ice during their trip in August. Instead of giant white glaziers, the North Pole showed them only oceanic waters. |
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