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International report on 2021 climate: record  greenhouse gases, ocean heat, sea level

9/19/2022

 
Greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea levels and ocean heat content reached record highs in 2021, according to the 32nd annual State of the Climate report. - NASA
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Seawater could provide nearly unlimited amounts of critical battery material

8/21/2022

 
Booming electric vehicle sales have spurred a growing demand for lithium. But the light metal, which is essential for making power-packed rechargeable batteries, isn't abundant. Now, researchers report a major step toward tapping a virtually limitless lithium supply: pulling it straight out of seawater. "This represents substantial progress" for the field, says Jang Wook Choi, a chemical engineer at Seoul National University who was not involved with the work. He adds that the approach might also prove useful for reclaiming lithium from used batteries. Lithium is prized for rechargeables because it stores more energy by weight than other battery materials. Manufacturers use more than 160,000 tons of the material every year, a number expected to grow nearly 10-fold over the next decade. But lithium supplies are limited and concentrated in a handful of countries, where the metal is either mined or extracted from briny water.- Science

New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States

8/21/2022

 
According to new data from the Rhodium Group analyzed by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, warming temperatures and changing rainfall will drive agriculture and temperate climates northward, while sea level rise will consume coastlines and dangerous levels of humidity will swamp the Mississippi River valley. Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States. See how the North American places where humans have lived for thousands of years will shift and what changes are in store for your county. - ProPublica
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As Oceans Warm, Marine Life Faces Extinction Levels That Rival Dinosaurs' End

5/1/2022

 
By 2100, we could be heading towards a loss of life in our oceans that rivals some of the largest extinction events in Earth's history if we don't continue to tackle the climate catastrophe, new modeling warns. But "it is not too late to enact the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions needed to avoid a major extinction event," Princeton geoscientists Justin Penn and Curtis Deutsch explain in their paper. Using modeling calibrated against ancient fossil records, they predict the consequences of runaway climate change on marine animals and provide a plausible explanation for an enduring ocean mystery in the process. - Science Alert

Oyster reefs in Texas are disappearing. Fishermen there fear their jobs will too

4/29/2022

 
At Johny Jurisich's family dock in Texas City, more than a dozen empty oyster boats with names like Sunshine and Captain Fox lazily float in the marina on a recent Monday morning – an odd sight for what is normally peak oyster harvesting season. "On a Monday morning, this beautiful weather, they would all be out there (in the bay). This would be an empty marina," says Jurisich, whose family owns the wholesale company US Sea Products and has worked in the oyster business for generations. Nearby at Misho's Oyster Company in San Leon, mariachi music blares into an empty shucking room, the conveyor belts at a standstill. Just a few dozen oyster sacks line what would normally be a full freezer room. Currently, 25 of the state's 27 harvesting areas are already closed. The season normally runs from Nov. 1 through April 30, but many of the areas have been closed since mid-December – a move the state says is necessary for future sustainability. - NPR
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In Peru, fishermen struggle to stay afloat after oil spill

3/14/2022

 
After a large crude-oil spill by the Spanish-owned Repsol oil refinery caused suspension of fishing in Peru, more than 2,500 fishermen have been out of work. Those affected are on the poverty line and it remains unclear when they can return to fish.  - CSMonitor

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A major Atlantic current is at a critical transition point

2/26/2022

 
An analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change in August found that the larger system that the Gulf Stream is part of, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), is approaching a tipping point. Over the last century, this ocean circulation system has “moved closer to a critical threshold, where it may abruptly shift from the current, strong circulation mode to a much weaker one,” says study author Niklas Boers, a climate researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Should the AMOC weaken substantially, it could bring intense cold and stronger storms to Europe, raise sea levels across the northeast coast of North America, and disrupt the flow of vital nutrients that phytoplankton, marine algae that make up the foundation of the aquatic food web, need to grow in the North Atlantic.- PBS
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Offshore wind farms could double as electric charging stations for ships

2/17/2022

 
Offshore wind farms already provide gigawatts of clean electricity to the grid worldwide. Now efforts are underway to supply some of that wind-blown power directly to ships. Most vessels burn dirty diesel fuels to carry people and cargo across the water, trailing large amounts of greenhouse gases and toxic air pollution in their wake. In 2021, carbon dioxide emissions from the global shipping industry rose by 4.9 percent over the previous year amid a surge in seaborne trade. At the same time, offshore wind installations are booming off the coasts of European and Asian countries. The United States, which has long lagged in offshore wind, now has dozens of projects in the works. - Canary Media
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Conservation Commitment for French Polynesia

2/12/2022

 
The Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project today applauded French Polynesian President Édouard Fritch’s commitment to conserve roughly 1 million sq km (386,000 sq mi) by creating a new large-scale marine protected area and establishing artisanal fishing zones around 118 islands in the South Pacific Ocean. During the One Ocean Summit in Brest, France, earlier today, President Fitch pledged to launch an effort to create a 500,000-square-kilometer (193,000 square miles) marine protected area in the SW area of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ)—a move long supported by local mayors and community members. In fact, President Fritch acknowledged the local proposal, calling it by the name Rāhui Nui, or “big rāhui”—a Tahitian reference to the traditional Polynesian practice of restricting access to an area or resource to conserve it. - Pew Trust
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Paint Is The Largest Source Of Microplastics In The Ocean, Study Finds

2/10/2022

 
Particles of paint account for more than half (58%) of all the microplastics that end up in the world’s oceans and waterways every year, according to a new study. The study by the Swiss-based Environmental Action (EA) claims that far more paint is leaking into the oceans than previously thought. Previously studies have estimated that paint accounts for between 9 and 21% of microplastics in our ocean and waterways. - Forbes
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The Maldives is being swallowed by the sea. Can it adapt?

1/30/2022

 
As the pace of climate change accelerates, this tiny nation is trying to buy time, in hopes that the world’s leaders will reduce carbon emissions before the Maldives’ inevitable demise. The archipelago has bet its future—along with a substantial sum from the national purse—on construction of an artificial, elevated island that could house a majority of the population of nearly 555,000 people. Meanwhile, a Dutch design firm plans to build 5,000 floating homes on pontoons anchored in a lagoon across the capital. - National Geographic
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The Battle to Save Waikiki Beach

1/30/2022

 
Waikiki might be one of the most famous beaches in the world, a synonym for surfing and sun-soaked vacations that draw millions of people annually. But for years, Honolulu and the State of Hawaii have been reckoning with a very uncomfortable fact: The beach is vanishing. Just below the infinity pool at the Sheraton Waikiki, an advancing shoreline claimed a walkway and set of concrete stairs, which now dangle above the water. At the Outrigger Reef hotel, ocean water laps directly against the wall of the new Monkeypod Kitchen restaurant, still under renovation. - Politico
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Scientists build new atlas of ocean's oxygen-starved waters

1/9/2022

 
Life is teeming nearly everywhere in the oceans, except in certain pockets where oxygen naturally plummets and waters become unlivable for most aerobic organisms. These desolate "oxygen-deficient zones," or ODZs make up less than 1 percent of the ocean's total volume, but are a significant source of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Their boundaries can also limit the extent of fisheries and marine ecosystems. Now MIT scientists have generated the most detailed, three-dimensional "atlas" of the largest ODZs in the world. The new atlas provides high-resolution maps of the two major, oxygen-starved bodies of water in the tropical Pacific. These maps reveal the volume, extent, and varying depths of each ODZ, along with fine-scale features, such as ribbons of oxygenated water that intrude into otherwise depleted zones. - phys.org
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Maersk spends $1.4 billion on ships that can run on ‘carbon neutral’ methanol

11/13/2021

 
Danish firm Maersk said Tuesday it is ordering eight large, ocean-going vessels able to run on what it called “carbon neutral methanol.”  The world’s largest container shipping firm said the vessels would be built by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries and have the capacity to carry around 16,000 containers. According to a number of reports, each ship will cost $175 million, making the total cost $1.4 billion. In a video message, Morten Bo Christiansen, Maersk’s head of decarbonization, said the vessels would “hit the waters from early 2024.” He added: “Once they are all out there sailing on green methanol, they will save a million tons of CO2 every year.” - CNBC
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They pulled 63,000 lbs of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - just the start

10/29/2021

 
A fridge, toilet seats, and more than 63,000 pounds of trash. That's what a cleanup team recovered in a monthslong effort to chip away at the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive collection of marine debris plaguing the Pacific Ocean.  A half-mile long trash-trapping system named "Jenny" was sen  out in late July to collect waste, pulling out many items that came from humans like toothbrushes, VHS tapes, golf balls, shoes and fishing gear. Jenny made nine trash extractions over the 12-week cleanup phase, with one extraction netting nearly 20,000 pounds of debris by itself. The mountain of recovered waste arrived in British Columbia, Canada, this month, with much of it set to be recycled. - USA Today

Our underwater future: What sea level rise will look like around the globe

10/24/2021

 
The planet is warming rapidly, resulting in historic drought, deadly floods and unusual melting events in the Arctic. It is also causing steady sea level rise, which scientists say will continue for decades. A new study from Climate Central, a nonprofit research group, shows that roughly 50 major coastal cities will need to implement "unprecedented" adaptation measures to prevent rising seas from swallowing their most populated areas. The analysis, in collaboration with researchers at Princeton University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, resulted in striking visual contrasts between the world as we know it today and our underwater future, if the planet warms to 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. - Climate Central / CNN
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Melting of polar ice shifting Earth itself, not just sea levels

10/24/2021

 
The melting of polar ice is not only shifting the levels of our oceans, it is changing the planet Earth itself. Newly minted Ph.D. Sophie Coulson and her colleagues explained in a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters that as glacial ice from Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic Islands melts, Earth's crust beneath these land masses warps, an impact that can be measured hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles away. "Scientists have done a lot of work directly beneath ice sheets and glaciers," said Coulson, who did her work in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and received her doctorate in May from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. "So they knew that it would define the region where the glaciers are, but they hadn't realized that it was global in scale." By analyzing satellite data on melt from 2003 to 2018 and studying changes in Earth's crust, Coulson and her colleagues were able to measure the shifting of the crust horizontally. Their research, which was highlighted in Nature, found that in some places the crust was moving more horizontally than it was lifting. In addition to the surprising extent of its reach, the Nature brief pointed out, this research provides a potentially new way to monitor modern ice mass changes. - Phys.Org

Map of Oil Rigs in the Gulf of Mexico - Reference Only

10/13/2021

 
This maps is here just for class discussion.  - DrillingMaps.com
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Coastal Erosion in San Clemente Threatens Railroad Tracks, Pricey Homes

10/4/2021

 
Each day after the tide went out, workers piled enormous rocks onto the sandy beach.  They were rushing to dump at least 11,000 tons to keep the ocean at bay and reopen a picturesque stretch of railroad track in San Clemente.  In the nearby Cyprus Shores gated community, cracks recently began surfacing in the clubhouse and several multimillion-dollar homes. The tracks were shut down last month after large waves swept in and the ground became unstable.  The forces at work along this beach and the rest of the California coast cannot, in the long run, be stopped by a stack of boulders. Climate change has led to rising sea levels, which translates to more intense battering of beachside communities. - LA Times
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After Hurricane Ida, Oil Infrastructure Springs Dozens of Leaks

9/27/2021

 
When Hurricane Ida barreled into the Louisiana coast with near 150 mile-per-hour winds on Aug. 30, it left a trail of destruction. The storm also triggered the most oil spills detected from space after a weather event in the Gulf of Mexico since the federal government started using satellites to track spills and leaks a decade ago.  In the two weeks after Ida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a total of 55 spill reports, including a spill near a fragile nature reserve. It underscores the frailty of the region’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure to intensifying storms fueled by climate change. - NY Times

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Oceanside Searches for Ways to Keep Sand on Its Eroding Beaches

7/25/2021

 
Oceanside’s annual harbor dredging and the occasional regional sand replenishment projects are not enough to save the city’s eroding beaches, a new study shows.  A proposal to build rock groins on the beach appears to be the best way to stop or at least slow the steady erosion that has been chewing away the city’s coastline since the 1940s, according to the study prepared for Oceanside by the Long Beach-based consulting firm GHD.  “Sand from this (harbor dredging) program does little to really benefit the city beaches,”  -San Diego Union
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The Science of Predicting When Bluffs in Southern California Will Collapse

7/14/2021

 
In August 2019, three women were strolling along the beach of Encinitas, California, north of San Diego, when the oceanfront bluff unexpectedly crumbled, showering them with tonnes of sandstone. One of the women, who had been celebrating her recovery from breast cancer, was killed instantly, while her sister and niece later died in the hospital.  That tragic event was neither the first nor the last bluff collapse in a scenic and densely populated, yet precarious, coastal region. Just a few kilometers to the south in Del Mar, a bluff collapsed following a rainstorm in 2016, undermining a busy coastal roadway. Sections of beachside cliffs came crashing down in the area in 2018, too, though no injuries were reported. In February this year, another bluff collapsed—along with the aging sea wall intended to hold it back—about 10 meters from the rail line that links San Diego and Los Angeles and serves nearly eight million passengers and numerous freight trains annually. - Smithsonian


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Miami Condo Collapse Highlights Urgent Need to Adapt to Rising Seas

7/6/2021

 
The collapse of the condominium building in Surfside, Florida, may force what some say is a long overdue conversation about the hard realities of climate change that will transform one of the nation’s most vulnerable regions.  To be sure, no evidence has emerged so far to connect climate change to the middle-of-the-night collapse of the Champlain Towers on June 24, which buried residents in the rubble. Sea level has risen eight inches in South Florida since 1981, when the 12-story condo was built—not enough to be responsible for its collapse, says Hal Wanless, a University of Miami geologist and South Florida’s preeminent voice on sea-level rise.  The investigation so far is more focused on a confluence of events including delays by the homeowners association in carrying out recommended repairs and an environmental danger that’s been known for more than a century: the corrosive effects of salt water on coastal construction. - National Geographic
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An SOS From The Ocean (TED Radio Podcast - 52:00)

6/27/2021

 
For centuries, humans have relied on the oceans for resources and food... but even the deepest sea has its limits. This hour, TED speakers discuss how we can save our seas to save our planet.  Guests include marine biologists Asha de Vos, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, and Alasdair Harris, and oceanographer Sylvia Earle.  - NPR

A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.

6/2/2021

 
While some "news" channels and Facebook "experts" dispute the reality of human made climate change, those changes already are affecting Miami.  - NYTimes


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