This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
World’s Oceans Warming 40% Faster Than Previously Thought
An analysis of four recent studies of ocean temperatures has corrected some of the discrepancies between climate models that projected higher levels of ocean warming and observational data that turned up lower temperatures, concluding that the higher numbers were right.
The article, published in Science Friday, shows that the world's oceans are in fact warming about 40 percent faster than previously thought.
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2013, showed that leading climate change models seemed to predict a much faster increase in ocean heat content over the last 30 years than was seen in observations," study author and University of California (UC) Berkeley graduate student Zeke Hausfather said in a UC Berkeley press release. "That was a problem, because of all things, that is one thing we really hope the models will get right. The fact that these corrected records now do agree with climate models is encouraging in that is removes an area of big uncertainty that we previously had."
But what is encouraging for scientists in terms of better understanding climate change may also be alarming for marine life and coastal residents, especially in the tropics. Ocean warming can have the following serious consequences, according to The New York Times.
1. Sea Level Rise: Warm water expands, contributing to rising sea levels, and most of the sea level rise observed up until now is more because of this effect than because of melting glaciers. Ocean warming predicted to take place this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced would be enough to raise sea levels around one foot, the paper found.
2. Stronger, Wetter Storms: Warmer oceans contribute to storms that are both stronger and rain more, like this 2018's Hurricane Florence. As oceans warm, extreme weather events like these will become even more common.
3. Ocean Life: A fifth of all corals have already died because of warmer oceans, which have a harder time sustaining life. This could also be a problem for people in the tropics who depend on fish for protein. "The actual ability of the warm oceans to produce food is much lower, so that means they're going to be more quickly approaching food insecurity," Oceana Deputy Chief Scientist Kathryn Matthews told The New York Times.
Oceans are particularly important for understanding global warming because they absorb around 93 percent of the extra solar energy trapped by greenhouse gasses. Further, they tend to heat more regularly because they are not influenced by events like El Niño, The UC Berkeley release explained.
"If you want to see where global warming is happening, look in our oceans," Hausfather said in the release.
However, accurate ocean temperature readings were hard to come by until the mid 2000s, when a network of 4,000 floating robots called Argo was put in place. The robots dive below the ocean every few days to take temperature, PH and salinity readings, but before the network was created, ocean measurements could only be taken by bathythermographs that would record temperatures just once, since they could not be recovered from the ocean floor. More accurate meassurements means a more accurate understanding of the steady increase of ocean warming.
"We can now say with confidence now that 2018 will be the warmest year on record for the Earth's oceans, beating the second-place year (2017) by a comfortable margin," Hausfather wrote on Twitter.
Three of the studies considered by Hausfather and his colleagues made more accurate ocean temperature readings as far back as the 1970s by using new methods to correct for errors in both Argo and bathythermograph readings.
The fourth used the novel method of measuring atmospheric oxygen levels, since oceans release oxygen as they warm. This last study caused a stir in fall of 2018 for originally calculating that oceans were warming 60 percent more than previously believed, a figure that had to be revised when errors were discovered. But Hausfather told The New York Times that those corrections brought the paper's findings in line with an emerging consensus.
"The correction made it agree a lot better with the other new observational records," Mr. Hausfather said. "Previously it showed significantly more warming than anyone, and that was potentially worrisome because it meant our observational estimates might be problematic. Now their best estimate is pretty much dead-on with the other three recent studies."
Britain's Prince William interviewed famed broadcaster David Attenborough on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Switzerland.
During the sit-down, the 92-year-old naturalist advised the world leaders and business elite gathered in Davos this week that we must respect and protect the natural world, adding that the future of its survival—as well as humanity's survival—is in our hands.
Electric vehicle sales took off in 2018, with a record two million units sold around the world, according to a new Deloitte analysis.
What's more, the accounting firm predicts that another 21 million electric cars will be on the road globally over the next decade due to growing market demand for clean transportation, government subsidies, as well as bans on fossil fuel cars.
By Matthew Savoca
Plastic pollution in the world's oceans has become a global environmental crisis. Many people have seen images that seem to capture it, such as beaches carpeted with plastic trash or a seahorse gripping a cotton swab with its tail.
As a scientist researching marine plastic pollution, I thought I had seen a lot. Then, early in 2017, I heard from Alex Weber, a junior at Carmel High School in California.
Greenland is melting about four times faster than it was in 2003, a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found, a discovery with frightening implications for the pace and extent of future sea level rise.
"We're going to see faster and faster sea level rise for the foreseeable future," study lead author and Ohio State University geodynamics professor Dr. Michael Bevis said in a press release. "Once you hit that tipping point, the only question is: How severe does it get?"
Finally, some good news about the otherwise terrible partial government shutdown. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot issue permits to conduct seismic testing during the government impasse.
The Justice Department sought to delay—or stay—a motion filed by a range of coastal cities, businesses and conservation organizations that are suing the Trump administration over offshore oil drilling, Reuters reported. The department argued that it did not have the resources it needed to work on the case due to the shutdown.
Most people have heard of the Amazon, South America's famed rainforest and hub of biological diversity. Less well known, though no less critical, is the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland.
Like the Amazon, the Pantanal is ecologically important and imperiled. Located primarily in Brazil, it also stretches into neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay. Covering an area larger than England at more than 70,000 square miles, the massive wetland provides irreplaceable ecosystem services that include the regulation of floodwaters, nutrient renewal, river flow for navigability, groundwater recharge and carbon sequestration. The wetland also supports the economies of the four South American states it covers.
By Andrea Germanos
Organizers said 35,000 people marched through the streets of the German capital on Saturday to say they're "fed up" with industrial agriculture and call for a transformation to a system that instead supports the welfare of the environment, animals and rural farmers.
EVs 101: Your Guide to Electric Vehicles
By Patrick Rogers
If you have ever considered making the switch to an environmentally friendly electric vehicle, don't drag your feet. Though EV prices are falling, and states are unveiling more and more public charging stations and plug-in-ready parking spots, the federal government is doing everything it can to slam the brakes on our progress away from gas-burning internal combustion engines. President Trump, likely pressured by his allies in the fossil fuel industry, has threatened to end the federal tax credits that have already helped put hundreds of thousands of EVs on the road—a move bound to harm not only our environment but our economy, too. After all, the manufacturing and sale of EVs, hybrids, and plug-in hybrids supported 197,000 jobs in 2017, according to the most recent U.S. Energy and Employment Report.