Tag: healthy oceans

Never before have so many scientists conducted research on what impacts the declining pH value of seawater has on animals and plants in the ocean. The experts have now compiled their results for the second report on ocean acidification of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which will be made public today at the twelfth conference of the Parties to the Convention. Major focus is placed on the consequences that also have an effect on us human beings. By means of this summary, the CBD wants to put the problem of the acidifying oceans on the international political agenda. The authors of the new report include scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). “The past five years were certainly of major importance for ocean acidification research,” says Dr. Felix Mark, an AWI biologist and one of the authors of the current CBD report on ocean acidification (to the complete interview with Dr. Felix Mark). Since 2009 – when the first CBD report on ocean acidification appeared – experts from all over the world have published more than 1,000 new studies on the impacts of the declining pH value of seawater on animals and plants ...

Accessing two previously untapped streams of satellite data, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and their colleagues have created a new map of the world's seafloor, creating a much more vivid picture of the structures that make up the deepest, least-explored parts of the ocean. Thousands of previously uncharted mountains rising from the seafloor and new clues about the formation of the continents have emerged through the new map, which is twice as accurate as the previous version produced nearly 20 years ago. Developed using a scientific model that captures gravity measurements of the ocean seafloor, the new map extracts data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) CryoSat-2 satellite, which primarily captures polar ice data but also operates continuously over the oceans, and Jason-1, NASA's satellite that was redirected to map the gravity field during the last year of its 12-year mission. Combined with existing data and drastically improved remote sensing instruments, the new map, described in the journal Science, has revealed details of thousands of undersea mountains, or seamounts, extending a kilometer or more from the ocean bottom. The new map also gives geophysicists new tools to investigate ocean spreading centers and little-studied remote ocean ...

Scientists take sea ice samples out of Polarstern's mummy chair, which is used to investigate sea ice without actually setting a foot on it. (Image Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institute) The area of sea ice in the Arctic fell to a summer minimum of around 5.0 million square kilometres this year, which is about 1.6 million square kilometres more than the record low in 2012. According to sea ice physicist Marcel Nicolaus from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and Lars Kaleschke from the Hamburg Cluster of Excellence for Climate Research (CliSAP) this confirms the long-term downward trend in the Arctic. On the other hand, the winter ice sheet in the South Polar Ocean has expanded to an area of 20.0 million square kilometres, as the researchers report, which exceeds the 30-year-maximum from the previous year. This Thursday, September 18, Marcel Nicolaus, Lars Kaleschke and other leading sea ice experts will be available for discussions and interviews at an international sea ice symposium in Hamburg. "The current minimum sea ice in the Arctic illustrates the continuation of a long-term downward trend. With an area of 5.0 million square kilometres, the 2014 minimum approximately equals last year's minimum. This by no means represents a trend ...

The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2013, propelled by a surge in levels of carbon dioxide. This is according to the World Meteorological Organization's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, which injected even greater urgency into the need for concerted international action against accelerating and potentially devastating climate change. The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin showed that between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34% increase in radiative forcing - the warming effect on our climate - because of long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide. In 2013, concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 142% of the pre-industrial era (1750), and of methane and nitrous oxide 253% and 121% respectively. The observations from WMO's Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) network showed that CO2 levels increased more between 2012 and 2013 than during any other year since 1984. Preliminary data indicated that this was possibly related to reduced CO2 uptake by the earth's biosphere in addition to the steadily increasing CO2 emissions. The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations - and not emissions - of greenhouse gases. Emissions represent what goes into the atmosphere. Concentrations represent what remains in the atmosphere ...

Commissioner Robert Hill from Australia and Deputy Executive Secretary Rémi Parmentier presented the Global Ocean Commission’s final report at the UN SIDS conference. The UN conference on Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) which just took place in Samoa was the opportunity for the Global Ocean Commission to further engage with SIDS governments and stakeholders. On 1st September, a delegation made up of Commissioner Robert Hill from Australia and Deputy Executive Secretary Rémi Parmentier presented the Commission's recent report "From Decline to Recovery - A Rescue Package for the Global Ocean" at an event co-sponsored by SPREP, the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme, chaired by SPREP Deputy Director General Kosi Latu. In a keynote address delivered on behalf of President Tommy Remengesau, Palau's Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Umiich Sengebau welcomed the proposals of the Global Ocean Commission, especially the ideas contained to combat IUU - illegal, unregulated and unreported - fishing, and the Commission's call to eliminate high seas fishing fleet's fuel subsidies. "We agree with the Global Ocean Commission that it is high time for developed countries with distant water fleets to act in accordance with their international obligations, and stop fuel subsidies to the fleets operating ...

During an expedition with the German research vessel Polarsternoff the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, an international team of scientists discovered more than 130 active methane seeps at the seafloor. According to chief scientist and MARUM researcher Gerhard Bohrmann, this is the first report of greenhouse gases seeping out of the seabed in the Southern Ocean. The finding was recently published in the Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Continental and marine seepage of methane is a research issue of global importance. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methane is about 21 times more powerful in warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. However, it is uncertain how much methane is emitted at the seafloor and whether it could eventually reach the atmosphere. To answer these and other questions, German, British, and US-American scientists embarked with the German RV Polarstern in the spring of 2013 in search of the Antarctic pieces of the global methane puzzle. "Our hydro-acoustic survey with the shipboard echo sounders focused on two bays off the north-eastern coast of South Georgia", says chief scientist Gerhard Bohrmann. "An especially close-meshed survey grid was carried out in Cumberland Bay, within visual range of the buildings of the historic ...

The latest Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition was launched at the NOC in Southampton - making £1.5 million available to UK businesses to develop novel adaptive autonomous ocean sampling network (AOSN) management systems. The competition, run by the Natural Environment Research Council, in partnership with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and Innovate UK, will see funds made available to assess and develop novel adaptive autonomous ocean sampling network (AAOSN) management systems. These systems will need to be capable of coordinating a suite of marine autonomous systems, enable the gathering of data from the ocean over periods of several months and have the ability to track and sample dynamic features. The competition will run in two phases: phase one opened on 2 September for feasibility studies, with contracts to be awarded, for those selected, in mid-December and completed by 31 March 2015. Up to five phase one studies will be funded up to a cost including VAT of £50,000 each. After a review of the outcomes of the phase one studies, selected participants will be invited to apply for phase two for the development of prototypes, which would be capable of undertaking demonstration missions at sea. It is ...

As part of a large-scale summer Arctic research expedition "Kara-Summer - 2014" a meteorological station was installed that meets the latest modern requirements for such equipment, on the island of Uedinenie. The expedition organized by the "Arctic Research and Development Center" (a joint venture of "Rosneft" and ExxonMobil), with the support of the specialists from the FGBI "Arctic and Antarctic Scientific Research Institute" has completed the restoration of the system of meteorological observations in the Kara Sea, where previously as commissioned by the Company three more stations were installed. This will allow supplying the region with a full-fledged complex of meteorological monitoring. Also, preventive maintenance of all previously installed meteorological stations on the archipelago Novaya Zemlya was carried out. The Company is systematically implementing an extensive program to restore all systems of meteorological observations in the Arctic, and the expedition is planning to install a few more meteorological stations in the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea. A unified network of meteorological observation will not only allow optimizing the works on geological exploration and increasing the effectiveness of extraction works, but it will also enable a series of large-scale scientific and research programs to study the region. The amount ...

NOAA scientists and partners are launching a number of new unmanned aircraft and water vehicles to collect weather information as part of a coordinated effort to improve hurricane forecasts. Several of these research projects and other NOAA led efforts to improve hurricane forecasting were made possible, in part, because of the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013. The act was passed by Congress and signed by the President in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. It provides $60 billion in funding to multiple agencies for disaster relief. NOAA received $309.7 million to provide technical assistance to those states with coastal and fishery impacts from Sandy, and to improve weather forecasting and weather research and predictive capability to help future preparation, response and recovery from similar events. Unmanned Planes Gather Storm Details As hard as meteorologists work to forecast storms - even flying planes straight into hurricanes to measure wind speed, direction, water vapor and other data - prediction remains an imprecise science. This is particularly true when forecasting hurricane wind speed, known as hurricane intensity. To improve this predictive aspect of our environmental intelligence, NOAA scientists and partners are sending unmanned aircraft into places where it would be unsafe, impossible or ...

Last month the U.N. Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) submitted seventeen SDGs to the U.N. General Assembly. The SDGs will form the basis for the global sustainable development agenda from 2015 through 2030. One of these goals - the Ocean SDG - aims to “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”. Ocean industries are encouraged to send comments about the Ocean SDG to the WOC by 29 August to ensure ocean business community input to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) submission to the U.N. on the draft SDGs. Ocean industry representatives are also invited and encouraged to attend the WOC Business Forum on Ocean Policy and Planning (New York, 29-30 September, 2014) where the ocean business community will determine priorities for engaging on ocean policy, including for the Ocean SDG. Specific targets of the Ocean SDG include: Preventing and significantly reducing marine pollution of all kinds - by 2025. Sustainably managing and protecting marine and coastal ecosystems to avoid significant adverse impacts - by 2020. Minimizing and addressing the impacts of ocean acidification - no target date. Restoring fish stocks by regulating harvesting, ending overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and ...