Clipmarks | pokkets's 'ocean' clips

Arctic ocean covered by thin ice

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:57:23 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Michael Reilly

Recent measurements of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean have found that it has melted to its lowest volume in recorded history.

Although the area of Arctic sea ice is greater than at the corresponding period in 2007 - the lowest coverage ever - experts are concerned that it may be much thinner.

Dr Walt Meier of US National Snow and Ice Data Center and colleagues say the overall ice volume in the Arctic Ocean is at least as low as 2007, and may even have dwindled more by as far as 10%.

Meier says this makes the ice more prone to melting than ever before.

The area of ocean that sea ice covers can vary dramatically from year to year, so scientists look at ice volume as a long-term indicator of the "health" of the ice.

Since satellite measurements began 30 years ago, it has been in steady decline.

"The long term trends in ice volume show a clear trend toward warming temperatures," says Meier. "The health of the ice is at the same state or worse than it was last year."

'Chemical equator' keeps southern air clean

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:04:17 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: The virtual map says it all. Now it means the approach to the solution of the pollution problem needs to be tackled in different ways in each hemisphere. Atmospheric pollution is only one problem. More investigation needs to be done into the nature of oceanic pollution. it did make me wonder of the Nuclear Fusion experiments on Mururoa (Aopuni) and Bikini atolls in French Polynesia last Century.
The first nuclear test was conducted on July 2, 1966, code named Aldebaran. France abandoned nuclear testing in the atmosphere in 1974 and moved testing underground in the midst of intense world pressure. A total of 147 underground nuclear tests were conducted at Mururoa and Fangataufa. This practice created much controversy as cracking of the atolls was discovered, A 1979 test conducted at half the usual depth caused a large submarine landslide on the southwest rim of the atoll.
Just somehow seemed relevant

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Michael Reilly

A boundary of air, wrapped like a belt around the earth's equator, is keeping the polluted atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere separate from the relatively pristine south, say UK researchers.

The team, led by Dr Jacqueline Hamilton of the University of York, have dubbed the peculiar wall of air the "chemical equator."

Colours indicate carbon monoxide concentrations. Red is polluted air and blue clean air (Glenn Carver, Cambridge University)

And while scientists have known about the feature for decades, Hamilton's team has just discovered an odd new wrinkle in its behavior.

Typically, where the northern and southern tropical trade winds come together they form a region of stormy updrafts called the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).

Instead of mixing, the trade winds rise from the ocean or land surface high into the stratosphere, where they diverge again.

keeping the pollutant-laden northern air dirty and the southern air clean.

Fossils tell of mass exodus from sea

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:44:11 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Creatures could develop some protection from the sun in the water, but the land was wide open, and predators were yet to get anywhere the efficiency of ocean based predators.
They can understand why shelled arthropods had the protection to survive, but can't understand the survival of soft bodied things like worms and Molluscs? then perhaps they can explain why a slug like creature evolved a shell and branched unto the Snail genotype.
i don't imagine life is safe anywhere for exposed slugs and worms, and solar radiation, particularly UV Light can accelerate development. and change. Perhaps they were moving to the place that was the least dangerous.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

New fossils of the first land animals reveal that ancient shores were alive with more crawling, slithering creatures than anyone previously thought.

In the late Cambrian era, nearly 500 million years ago, the seas were teeming with life. Food was abundant, but so were predators.

Palaeontologists believe animals fled the marine environment for the safe confines of tide pools, and ultimately dry land, where they could live without fear of being eaten.

From fossil tracks found in Ontario, Canada, researchers know that a group of insect-like creatures called arthropods were crawling on sand dunes around this time.

But how and when they migrated from the ocean to the dunes is still a mystery.

Despite the lack of predators, living on land was a dangerous proposition for creatures used to life at sea.

Suddenly they were faced with intense radiation from the sun, an atmosphere that would dry them out in a matter of hours, and no support from buoyancy.

Dry water makes storage a gas.

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:29:39 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: The Water, mixed with silica, is dry, and can hold methane for storage. Making it easier to manage

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Eric Bland

Chemists in the UK have developed a way to convert methane gas into a solid that looks like granulated sugar - making it easier to store.

Professor Andrew Cooper and his colleagues at the University of Liverpool have found that they can trap methane in a material made of silica and water, called 'dry water'.

They report their findings in Nature News.

Methane is seen as a viable alternative fuel, with experts estimating that deposits worldwide could contain more energy than coal, oil and all other fossil fuels combined.

There is a huge amount of energy in these resources

The question is how much of that material can we recover

Most of that methane is locked inside ice crystals in the Arctic or at the bottom of the ocean, where the pressure is high, the temperature is low, or both, which makes extracting those deposits difficult.

A chunk of white methane hydrate from the ocean depths is ice cold in your hand, but hold a lit match to it and yellow and blue flames rise from the methane

Ocean mud potential cause of 'megaquakes'

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:10:50 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Michael Reilly

US scientists believe ocean floor sediments may be the cause of megaquakes, including the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami.

David Scholl, an emeritus scientist at the United States Geological Survey, and his team have been looking closely at subduction zones.

These areas are where the ocean crust grinds beneath an adjacent tectonic plate, plunging in fits and starts into the mantle.

The zones are infamous for their catastrophic temblors, called 'megathrusts,' which often generate powerful earthquakes and devastating tsunamis.

The great magnitude 9.2 earthquake that shattered the Indian Ocean in 2004 occurred along a subduction zone, with the ensuing tsunami killing nearly a quarter of a million people.

The largest quake ever recorded, which shook southern Chile at magnitude 9.5 in 1960, was also born from subduction.

The researchers belive that where the sediment is thickest is where worst earthquakes inevitably strike.

Minke whales shedding blubber

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:56:02 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: The study is Japanese which puts the problem in a nut shell. They say the whales are 'suffering' because of a low krill number. What is significant about that?
Tuna eat krill.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Japanese scientists have released a study that suggests whales are losing blubber because ocean resources are growing scarce, a claim discounted by others as flawed.

The study, which was published in Polar Biology, after several other journals rejected it, was based on the research of 6779 whales, of which more than 4500 were killed - including some which were pregnant.

It found that the oceans are facing a shortfall of krill, a vital component of the food chain, due to climate change and the recovery of species such as humpback whales.

According to the study, Antarctic minke whales have shed on average 9% of their blubber during the past 18 years, corresponding to an annual weight loss of 17 kilograms.

Minke whales swim to the Antarctic every summer to feed, and to warm waters during the winter to breed.

Blubber is vital for whales because it helps to retain heat in cold waters and store energy and nutrition.

Viruses can catch colds, says study that redefines life itself

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:06:46 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Prof La Scola and his colleagues were surprised to spot a smaller type of virus attached to the virus-making factory inside infected cells. The new virus - Sputnik - was unable to infect cells by itself but seemed to hijack the larger to achieve its infectious aims.

By regulating the growth and death of plankton, giant viruses - and satellite viruses such as Sputnik - could be a major influence on ocean nutrient cycles and climate.

"These viruses could be major players in global systems," Nature is told by Prof Curtis Suttle, an expert in marine viruses at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

viruses can apparently get sick.

Even better, they're made sick by another virus.

Viruses are the ultimate example of KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. Nothing but a core of genetic material in a protein shell, they may not be able to do anything but replicate (and even then only with a host cell), but they also outnumber us umpty-billion to one.

Their simplicity also makes them hard to kill

Researchers at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have now discovered a virus, named "Sputnik" for its extreme simplicity, which can hijack the viral factory of another pathogen and insert its own code into the program.

The double-victimised cell now manufactures Sputniks, and copies of the original virus which do manage to be made suffer from damage and imperfections because of this second-super-sub-cellular-sabotage.

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

the discovery of a giant virus that itself falls ill through infection by another virus seems to suggest they too are alive

Tags: virology, biology, molecular biology

Seals help measure Southern Ocean

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:48:31 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: It's not easy to measure for us to measure the currents,and temperatures under the ice, but the seals have no trouble. A simple solution to what may otherwise have been a difficult problem to solve. The ice caps and polar oceans can provide critical information concerning the temperature regulation of the planet so details of changes are necessary to contribute to any picture we might pretend to have. I wonder if they've tried penguins?

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Tuesday, 12 August 2008 Darren Osborne

Elephant seals armed with ocean sensors are helping scientists fill a critical blind spot in understanding the oceans surrounding the southern continent.

findings appear in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science

Between 2004 and 2005, researchers attached sensors to the fur on the head of a number of southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonine).

During the two-year trial, 58 seals acquired a total of 16,5000 sea profiles, including 4520 from within the sea ice

30 times more than previously collected

the seal's ability to dive below the sea ice gives them an advantage over other measuring methods such as floats, ships and satellites.

Conventional oceanographic platforms cannot provide observations under the sea ice, particularly on the Antarctic continental shelf where the most important water mass transformations take place

oceans surrounding the earth's poles play an important role in the earth's climate system.

The hottest water on Earth

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:42:03 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: "Black smokers deep in the Atlantic are spouting 'supercritical' water at over 407 °C – something never before been seen in nature."

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

Even Jules Verne did not foresee this one. Deep down at the very bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, geochemist Andrea Koschinsky has found something truly extraordinary: "It's water," she says, "but not as we know it."

At over 3 kilometres beneath the surface, sitting atop what could be a huge bubble of magma, it's the hottest water ever found on Earth. The fluid is in a "supercritical" state that has never before been seen in nature.

Tags: science, geology, water, black smokers

Ocean Power Catches a Wave

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:36:55 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Europe and New Zealand to install commercial generators; U.S. lags

Sea Monster: A Portuguese utility plans to install wave-power generators like these.

The first commercial ocean energy project is scheduled to launch this summer off the coast of Portugal. Three snakelike wave-power generators built by Edinburgh's Pelamis Wave Power will deliver 2.25 megawatts through an undersea cable to the Portuguese coastal town of Aguçadoura. Within a year, another 28 generators should come online there, boosting the capacity to 22.5 MW. That may be a trickle of power, but the project represents a new push into wave and tidal power as governments eye the oceans as a way to meet their renewable energy targets.

Engineers have come up with a variety of schemes to harness the power of waves, the flow of currents, and the motion of the tides. The Pelamis generators, part of a class of wave-energy converters called linear absorbers, each comprise three long canisters that look like giant oxygen tanks

Tags: ocean power, wave

Volcanoes trigger for mass extinction

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:54:11 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: There's more than one way to become extinct.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Ninety-three million years ago a series of volcanoes erupted on the ocean floor starving the oceans of oxygen and wiping out swathes of marine life, according to a new report.

Black shale rocks off the coast of South America and in central Italy provide clues to what occurred

The answer to the catastrophe, contend scientists from the University of Alberta, Canada, lies in fire fountains that erupted on the ocean floor, altering the chemistry of the sea and possibly of the atmosphere too.

The report appears in the latest edition of Nature.

in a geological instant, a mass extinction, helped by a suddenly sluggish shift in ocean circulation, occurred. The remains of dead sea organisms

became transformed into oil

One possibility is that the volcanoes

seeded the upper level of the ocean with micronutrients, he says

Tiny plantlife on the sea surface, called phytoplankton, gorged on the food, storing up carbon as they grew. They then sank to the sea floor and decayed, stripping the ocean of oxygen.

Evolution of Life Was Stalled for 2 Billion Years

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:29:26 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Evolution of Life was Stalled for 2 Billion Years

A coherent picture of the environmental conditions that led to the evolution of animal life is finally emerging. Scientists say that oxygen deficiency and a lack of the heavy metal molybdenum in the oceans had blocked the evolution of life on Earth for nearly two billion years.

The molybdenum record shows that the second step occurred around 600 million years ago, when the entire ocean became oxygenated, which enabled the rise of multi-cellular life called eukaryotes -- the category that includes plants, humans and other complex creatures.

"These molybdenum depletions may have retarded the development of complex life such as animals for almost two billion years of Earth history," said Timothy Lyons, a professor at University of California Riverside. "The amount of molybdenum in the ocean probably played a major role in the development of life."

Molybdenum levels are also a reliable indicator of oxygen levels in ocean chemistry.

Yellow Submarine:Unmanned sub studies ocean

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:13:08 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: It can be steered by a rudder or by shifting it's batteries.

Clip Source: www.mail.com

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

Far out in the Atlantic, a little yellow submarine is trying to slip from current to current, gliding across the ocean beneath the waves.

The unmanned sub is nearing the halfway mark in its effort to travel from New Jersey to Spain, collecting scientific data along the way.

It isn't a first trip for the device, but it will be the longest, a proving effort to show that an undersea glider can take its place in a global ocean observing system

and can be controlled remotely

Like a glider airplane, the sub doesn't have a motor to drive it

the sub uses wings to fly through the water as it dives and rises, seeking currents that will carry it where the researchers want it to go, explained Scott Glenn, a marine sciences professor at

Rutgers University.

Instead of looking for thermals of rising air, however, the undersea glider sucks water in to dive and then pushes it out again to rise

It's crammed with batteries

Glenn hopes to learn is just how long they will last.

'Cut not sink' emissions says expert

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:34:53 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Many things as our history has shown can't be, and should not be tested while being put into practice. A quick study of our history of DIY efforts shows us that. We still have trouble learning the hard way. I have trouble imagining many of our solutions doing more than taking a system that is unbalanced and making it more unbalanced.
Many a persons famous last words have been 'this time it will be different.- and better'. Which can be clearly stupid, and the reason they are last words. We certainly need to give nature more credit and respect t that we are. It has its own means of self correction. We can work out how to work according to the principles of nature, rather than our own vanity, or we'll be corrected out of existence. Still, a new thread could start 'Homo Novalis' but it doesn't take very many individuals to establish the start of a new line. the rest of us may soon be obsolete. (soon in evolutionary time) and a subject in achaeology classes. Existential aversion therapy

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Anna Salleh

We would be better off reducing our greenhouse emissions rather than trying to sink them into the sea using ocean fertilisation, suggests an Australian expert.

The comments come as the Australian Government considers its position on ocean fertilisation.

"If you asked me would I do this for CO2 mitigation [I'd say] not now," says Associate Professor Thomas Trull of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre in Hobart.

he does not think the benefits outweigh the risks of the technology at this point, and it should only be carefully researched as an option of last resort

Ocean fertilisation involves adding nutrients such as iron or nitrogen to the sea to stimulate phytoplankton in the hope of sequestering carbon dioxide or fish stocks.

According to Trull no studies have been specifically designed to look at the risks of ocean fertilisation but evidence suggests possible risks include upsetting the food web and creating dead zones in the ocean.

Huge impact caused Mar's split personality

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:23:12 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

After more than 30 years, space scientists may have resolved one of the greatest enigmas in the solar system: why does Mars have two faces?

A paper appearing in the latest edition of Nature suggests the planet's Janus-like nature was caused by an impact with a Pluto-sized rock.

The topography of the southern hemisphere is more 'chaotic' compared to the smoother north

Pictures sent back by the US Viking spacecraft in the late 1970s unveiled Mars's northern hemisphere as an enormous lowland basin, where - or so it was suspected - a mighty ocean may have raged

But Mars's southern hemisphere is abruptly, bizarrely different

One explanation was that

volcanic forces within the planet's bowels caused a massive upwelling on the Martian surface

The contrasting theory

that the northern basin was the result of a

giant space rock which whacked into the infant Mars

Researchers at NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believe they have convincing evidence that the impact theory is solid.