Search Results for: Ocean

The co-dependence of mortality risk and poverty

The Indian Ocean tsunami, the Katrina hurricane catastrophe and the Pakistan earthquake in late 2005 bear disquieting similarities in their consequences on human populations. The tsunami took 300,000 lives with more than 100,000 still missing. Although many of the missing may well be displaced rather than casualties, the death toll will likely remain in excess of 300,000. Early images from the catastrophe would have lead one to bel

Linking mitigation to regional economic development

The unprecedented scale and complexity of the relief and reconstruction efforts following the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Island earthquake and Indian Ocean tsunami have motivated scientists, policy-makers, and development aid organizations to rethink the relationship between natural disaster mitigation and economic development. Two recent reports by the World Bank and the United Nations quantify the global exposure of populations and e

The long journey of particles near the ocean floor and its relevance for carbon burial

German and British scientists have studied the ocean off south-western Africa and have discovered that particles are transported to the deep ocean over thousands of years before being deposited on the seabed. This discovery may increase our understanding of how the oceans act as carbon dioxide sinks and how oil deposits form.

Areas of extremely high marine productivity are confined t

The majority of tiny marine plants weathered the abrupt climate changes that occurred in Earth’s past and bounced back, according to a Penn State geoscientist.

“Populations of plankton are pretty resilient,” says Dr. Timothy J. Bralower, head and professor of geoscience.

Bralower looked at cores of marine sediments related to thousands of years of deposition, to locate populations of these plankton during three periods of abrupt climate change. These abrupt changes wer

Humans are performing a high-stakes climate experiment by burning fossil fuels that release heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The outcome of that experiment is uncertain and computer models can do only so much to predict the future.
So scientists have been paying increasing attention to the geologic past, searching for possible lessons from ancient episodes of warming driven by natural processes which also might include emission of greenhouse gases. The research, discussed in

Large amounts of a chemical that boosts ozone production are being transported to North America from across the Pacific Ocean in May, according to a new report by researchers from Georgia Tech. These higher levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx), arriving in late spring, could be contributing to significant increases in ozone levels over North America. The research appeared in volume 33 of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“It’s well-known that pollutants don’t always stay in