November 8, 2018
Down to Earth With: Coastal scientist Gary Griggs
Maybe it was the summer camping trips with his family along the Pacific coast, or perhaps surfing off Santa Barbara, Calif., during college, but …
The EARTH archive
Ocean
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33 articles · Page 1 of 2
September 10, 2018
Surfactants slow oceanic carbon dioxide uptake
The oceans are the largest long-term carbon sink on Earth, absorbing about a quarter of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The rate of …
April 10, 2018
Radium levels suggest Arctic Ocean chemistry is changing
Rising temperatures have already caused changes in the Arctic environment, like diminishing sea ice and thawing permafrost. Now, it appears that …
March 8, 2018
Gyres spin up, currents get muddled
In addition to polynya formation and warming-induced surface freshening, other factors may also impact open-ocean convection in the Southern …
March 8, 2018
Disrupting the deep: Ocean warming reaches the abyss
Seventy-one percent of our planet is covered by ocean, and these basins contain 97 percent of Earth’s near-surface water. The ocean lies at the …
February 27, 2018
Heating up Enceladus' ice-covered ocean
Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, is covered by ice, but just beneath its icy surface lies an ocean of liquid water. New research suggests …
December 28, 2017
Driftwood reveals ancient Arctic currents and sea-ice levels
Arctic driftwood up to 12,000 years old is giving scientists a better understanding of how ocean currents and sea ice in the far north have …
August 17, 2017
Ancient wildfires suggest rising atmospheric oxygen helped end past ocean anoxia
Many times throughout Earth’s history, oxygen levels in the world’s oceans have decreased dramatically in episodes called oceanic anoxic events …
January 13, 2017
A new — and more toxic — normal? Harmful algal blooms find new habitats in changing oceans
In May 2015, a seizure-wracked sea lion hauled itself ashore on a beach in southern Washington. Testing confirmed it was suffering from domoic …
October 19, 2016
Pluto may still have liquid ocean
Last year, images from NASA’s New Horizons flyby of Pluto revealed geologic activity that suggested a liquid ocean may have once lurked beneath …
August 16, 2016
Tiny ocean bacteria could play big role in climate
In the 1990s, researchers identified the most abundant group of organisms in the ocean as Pelagibacterales, a class of free-living bacteria that …
July 14, 2016
Drilling for gold inside a submarine volcano
Earth scientists have been given the green light to drill into an active submarine volcano for the first time, with the hope of discovering …
July 6, 2016
Benchmarks: March 1961: Project Mohole undertakes the first deep-ocean drilling
Since its inception in the 1960s, the ocean drilling program — an international research program that explores the world’s ocean basins — has …
June 20, 2016
Benchmarks: January 23, 1960: Humans reach the deepest point on Earth
More than 9,000 meters underwater, a window buckles, sending a spider web of cracks across the glass. The entire submersible shakes, but no water …
April 19, 2016
The softer side of hydrothermal vents
Seafloor chimneys belching dark plumes of superheated, acidic fluids into the ocean, called “black smokers,” are the most common kind of …
March 30, 2016
North Sea uplift caused Jurassic cooling event
The climate of the Jurassic, long envisioned as ubiquitously warm from the equator to the poles, was actually more dynamic, sometimes cooling …
November 12, 2015
No laughing matter: Ocean nitrous oxide emissions greater than thought
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas and, since the banning of chlorofluorocarbons in 1987, it has become the main driver of ozone loss from …
November 2, 2015
Enceladus' extremely alkaline underground ocean
Saturn’s moon Enceladus is home to a vast underground ocean that erupts to the surface at the moon’s south pole in a giant plume of gas, ice and …
September 21, 2015
Ancient asteroids boiled Earth's oceans
The asteroid that wiped out the remaining dinosaurs — save for the avian variety — 66 million years ago was roughly 10 kilometers wide. Long …
July 17, 2015
Southbound icebergs off the hook for ice-age cooling
During the Late Pleistocene, changes in North Atlantic Ocean circulation triggered abrupt changes in global climate: In some locations in the …
July 6, 2015
A pair of moons with underground oceans
Jupiter and Saturn are both gas giants boasting multiple moons. Now, two separate studies have identified another similarity: Each appears to …
April 8, 2015
Some coral reefs bounce back after bleaching
Ocean temperatures that rise too much or for too long can harm coral reefs, sometimes causing mass die-offs that leave reefs nearly barren of …
January 14, 2015
Did three convicts survive their escape from Alcatraz? Modern modeling adds to a decades-old mystery
Twenty-first century science is shedding new light on a 53-year-old mystery involving one of the country’s most notorious prisons: Did three …
November 4, 2014
Pliocene tropical oceans were warmer after all
Scientists may have overturned the idea that Earth’s tropical oceans were the same temperature during the Early to Middle Pliocene — between …