Search Results for: ocean

A NASA study finds that perennial sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster than previously thought–at a rate of 9 percent per decade. If these melting rates continue for a few more decades, the perennial sea ice will likely disappear entirely within this century, due to rising temperatures and interactions between ice, ocean and the atmosphere that accelerate the melting process.

Perennial sea ice floats in the polar oceans and remains at the end of the summer, when the ice cover is at its

The first outbreak of the evolution of multicellular organisms falls on the Wend, the last period of the Proterozoic (Precambrian), about 620-550 million years ago. At that time, climate of our planet was rather cold, and glaciers that covered the single supercontinent nearly reached the equator. The cold is beneficial for the evolution of sea creatures.

In modern seas, significant concentrations of dissolved oxygen, phosphates, and the organic matter provide for a high biological productiv

Tethered Robotic Sub Helps Engineers Refine Computerized Navigation, Control Systems

In a new indoor tank filled with almost 43,000 gallons of water, Johns Hopkins engineers are developing and testing computer control systems to serve as the “brains” for some of the world’s leading deep sea robotic exploration vehicles. To promote advances in underwater robotics, the Whiting School of Engineering recently constructed the circular hydrodynamics tank, 14 feet deep and 25 feet in diamet

Oil from the wrecked tanker off the northwest coast of Spain had already reached the Spanish coast when ESA’s Envisat satellite acquired this radar image of the oil slick, stretching more than 150 km, on Sunday, 17 November, at 10.45 UTC.

The 26-year-old tanker, Prestige, can be seen as a bright white point located about 100 km off the coast. Support vessels are identifiable as smaller white points surrounding the ship. The huge oil slick is clearly visible as a dark plume emanating from the

Geologists may have to revise their ideas about what goes on in the Earth’s interior, following the publication today of new research in the journal ’Nature’. It appears that contrary to previous belief, part of the interior has remained undisturbed for at least two-and-a-half billion years, in spite of the massive forces at work inside the planet.

Like a saucepan of thick syrup being heated on the stove, huge convection currents within the Earth, generated by heat from the co

A new array of ocean robots has begun working deep in the Indian Ocean to help scientists understand Australia’s changing climate.

“This is a key region for the global climate system and installation of the robots will provide our best coverage to begin to understand how the Indian Ocean affects our climate,” says CSIRO’s Dr Gary Meyers.

Cycling between the surface and a depth of two kilometres every 10 days, the ocean robots are sampling conditions in a region thought to