PMEL in the News
International research team reports ocean acidification spreading rapidly in Arctic Ocean in area and depth
Ocean acidification (OA) is spreading rapidly in the western Arctic Ocean in both area and depth, according to new interdisciplinary research reported in Nature Climate Change by a team of international collaborators, including University of Delaware professor Wei-Jun Cai.
Too Hot to Handle: 7 Sizzling Places on Planet Earth
Voodoo may not be the hottest place, but it's a bustling paradise for countless marine creatures. "Imagine a vast deep-sea desert, where there is not enough food or energy to survive. It's cold and inhospitable," said David Butterfield, a principal research scientist of oceanography at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a collaboration between the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "In the middle of that desert, there are these amazing oases of life."
Arctic 2.0: What happens after all the ice goes?
As the Arctic slipped into the half-darkness of autumn last year, it seemed to enter the Twilight Zone. In the span of a few months, all manner of strange things happened. The cap of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean started to shrink when it should have been growing. Temperatures at the North Pole soared more than 20 °C above normal at times. And polar bears prowling the shorelines of Hudson Bay had a record number of run-ins with people while waiting for the water to freeze over.
With lowland snow, have Washington winters returned to ‘normal?'
The lowland snows are back. Temperatures have dropped. After three unusually warm winters, does the current winter's cold mark a return to a "normal" winter for western Washington? "It's not just normal, it's below normal," said Washington state Climatologist Nick Bond.
Does the 'Blob' foretell North Pacific future?
There is good news and bad news about the big warm-water "Blob" that has wreaked havoc on the North Pacific for the past three years, an expert told fellow scientists at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium in Anchorage. The good news: The unusual warm conditions that have persisted in the waters off Alaska and the West Coast now appear to be diminishing, said the climatologist who named the water mass the "Blob."