Largest Deep-Sea Coral Reef

The East Coast of the United States is known for its miles of gorgeous beaches, but now something beneath the surface has been discovered that makes it even more of a jewel.

Thanks to 3D imagery, scientists have mapped the largest coral reef deep in the ocean, stretching hundreds of miles off the U.S. Atlantic coast.

The reef extends more than 300 miles from Florida to South Carolina, marking the total area nearly three times the size of Yellowstone National Park. Maps of the reef were recently published in the journal "Geomatics" by nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust oceanographer Derek Sowers and other scientists, including several at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).     READ MORE...

Research Under the Water

Imagine working aboard a research station on the ocean floor, watching sea creatures swim past, then venturing out to explore the ocean’s surface. Or being able to examine the impact of climate change on coral reefs from the windows of your undersea research station.

Such facilities have so far been limited, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and developers of a proposed new “first of its kind” research laboratory hope to expand the opportunities and help humans learn more about the ocean.

Proteus Ocean Group – co-founded by Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the late ocean exploration pioneer Jacques Cousteau – is developing an “underwater space station of the ocean.” The group plans to build the station nearly 60 feet deep off the coast of Curaçao in the Caribbean by 2026.

NOAA and the ocean group announced this month they will partner to identify research opportunities as plans to build the station move forward, sharing information and scientific expertise.

The research facility would give scientists and the public a rare window on life under the ocean, the partners said. Much like the International Space Station and earlier versions of marine laboratories, aquanauts will live aboard the station as they conduct research and exploration beneath the sea.  READ MORE...

Heatwaves at the Bottom of the Ocean

In 2013, a monstrous marine heatwave known as 'The Blob' developed off the coast of Alaska and soon stretched as far south as Mexico along the Pacific coast of North America.

It lingered far longer than anyone expected, decimating fisheries, triggering toxic algal blooms, disturbing kelp forests, and starving sea birds of food.

At one point, a buoy bobbing atop the ocean near Oregon detected frightening jumps in temperature of up to seven degrees Celsius in less than an hour. The ocean was sweltering.

But scientists, with their attention fixed on temperature data streaming in from ocean surfaces, had little idea what was transpiring in the depths below.

Now, new modeling led by researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that marine heatwaves can unfold deep underwater, too – sometimes in tandem with heatwaves that ripple across the ocean surface or else when there is no detectable warming signal above.

The new analysis, of continental shelf waters surrounding North America, also finds these so-called bottom marine heatwaves can be more intense and last longer than hot spells at the ocean surface, though it varies from coast to coast.

"Researchers have been investigating marine heat waves at the sea surface for over a decade now," says lead author Dillon Amaya, a climate scientist with NOAA's Physical Science Laboratory.

But they have been limited to the cache of data on temperature extremes at the ocean surface, logged by floating buoys or detected by ships or overhead satellites. It's much harder to probe ocean temperatures further down the water column and along continental shelves.

Some data exist, but the researchers behind this latest study mostly had to extrapolate from ocean surface observations, inputting that data into computer models to simulate ocean currents that upwell from the deep, bringing essential nutrients to coastal waters.  READ MORE...

Sleeping Giant in Our Oceans

Red medusa found just off the bottom of the deep sea in Alaska. 

Credit: Hidden Ocean 2005/NOAA

A previously overlooked factor — the position of continents — helps fill Earth’s oceans with life-supporting oxygen. Continental movement could ultimately have the opposite effect, killing the majority of deep ocean creatures.

“Continental drift seems so slow, like nothing drastic could come from it, but when the ocean is primed, even a seemingly tiny event could trigger the widespread death of marine life,” said Andy Ridgwell, University of California, Riverside geologist. Ridgwell is co-author of a new study on forces affecting oceanic oxygen.

As the water at the ocean’s surface approaches the north or south pole, it becomes colder and denser and then sinks. When the water sinks, it transports oxygen pulled from Earth’s atmosphere down to the ocean floor.

Eventually, a return flow brings nutrients released from sunken organic matter back to the ocean’s surface, where it fuels the growth of plankton. Today’s oceans feature an incredible diversity of fish and other animals that are supported by both the uninterrupted supply of oxygen to lower depths and organic matter produced at the surface.

New research has found that this circulation of oxygen and nutrients can end quite suddenly. Using complex computer models, the scientists investigated whether the locations of continental plates affect how the ocean moves oxygen around. They were surprised to find that it does.

This finding led by researchers based at UC Riverside is detailed in the journal Nature. It was published today (August 17, 2022).  READ MORE...

A Crack in the Earth's Magnetic Field

On Thursday, a crack opened in Earth’s magnetic field and stayed open for nearly 14 hours, allowing Vecna and his minions through from the Upside Down. OK, perhaps not that last bit, but it did allow some powerful solar winds to pour through the hole, creating a geomagnetic storm that sparked some pretty epic aurora.

The crack in the magnet field was created by a rare phenomenon called a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) from the Sun. CIRs are large-scale plasma structures generated in the low and mid-latitude regions of the heliosphere – the region surrounding the Sun that includes the solar magnetic field and the solar winds – when fast and slow-moving streams of solar wind interact.

Like coronal mass ejections (CMEs), CIRs get flung out from the Sun towards Earth and can contain shockwaves and compressed magnetic fields that cause stormy space weather, which usually presents itself to us as pretty aurorae.

This one hit Earth’s magnetic field in the early hours of July 7 and caused a long-lasting G1-class geomagnetic storm. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analysts suspect a CME was embedded in the solar wind ahead of the CIR, Spaceweather.com reports.

Don't worry, cracks in Earth's magnetic field are normal. The magnetic field acts as a shield to protect us from solar storms spat out by the Sun. It was thought they opened and closed relatively quickly but now we know they can stay open for hours.  READ MORE...

Earth's CO2 Levels

CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps heat, gradually causing global warming 

[File: Charlie Riedel/AP Photo]

Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in May were 50 percent higher than during the pre-industrial era, reaching levels not seen on Earth for about four million years, the main US climate agency said on Friday.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere passed the threshold of 420 parts per million (ppm), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said. PPM is a unit of measurement used to quantify pollution in the atmosphere.

Last May, the rate was 419ppm, and in 2020, 417ppm.

Global warming caused by humans, particularly through the production of electricity using fossil fuels, transport, the production of cement, or even deforestation, is responsible for the new high, the NOAA said.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps heat, gradually causing global warming. It remains in the atmosphere and oceans for thousands of years.

Its warming effect is already causing dramatic consequences, noted NOAA, including the multiplication of heatwaves, droughts, fires or floods.

“Carbon dioxide is at levels our species has never experienced before – this is not new,” said Pieter Tans, a scientist with the Global Monitoring Laboratory at NOAA.

“We have known about this for half a century, and have failed to do anything meaningful about it. What’s it going to take for us to wake up?”  READ MORE...

Our US Electric Grid

CNN: As heat ramps up ahead of what forecasters say will be a hotter than normal summer, electricity experts and officials are warning that states may not have enough power to meet demand in the coming months. And many of the nation’s grid operators are also not taking climate change into account in their planning, even as extreme weather becomes more frequent and more severe.

All of this suggests that more power outages are on the way, not only this summer but in the coming years as well.

Power operators in the Central US, in their summer readiness report, have already predicted “insufficient firm resources to cover summer peak forecasts.” That assessment accounted for historical weather and the latest NOAA outlook that projects for more extreme weather this summer.

But energy experts tell CNN that some power grid operators are not considering how the climate crisis is changing our weather — including more frequent extreme events — and that is a problem if the intent is to build a reliable power grid.

“The reality is the electricity system is old and a lot of the infrastructure was built before we started thinking about climate change,” said Romany Webb, a researcher at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “It’s not designed to withstand the impacts of climate change.”

Webb says many power grid operators use historical weather to make investment decisions, rather than the more dire climate projections, simply because they want to avoid the possibility of financial loss for investing in what might happen versus what has already happened. She said it’s the wrong approach and it makes the grid vulnerable.  READ MORE...