Archive for June, 2012

Pollutants could pose health risks for five sea turtle species

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Researchers have measured for the first time concentrations of 13 compounds in five different endangered species of sea turtles that approach the amounts known to cause adverse health effects in other animals....

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Saving the Baltic Sea: Geo-engineering efforts to mix oxygen into the Deep Baltic should be abandoned, expert says

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Over the last decade, an average of 60,000 square kilometers of the Baltic Sea bottom has suffered from hypoxia without enough oxygen to support its normal ecosystem. Several large-scale geoengineering interventions are currently on the table as proposed solutions to this problem. Researchers are calling for geoengineering efforts that mix oxygen into the Deep Baltic to be abandoned....

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Potential for tsunamis in northwestern California documented

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Using studies that span the last three decades, scientists have compiled the first evidence-based comprehensive study of the potential for tsunamis in Northwestern California....

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Are mermaids real?

This item was filled under Facts, Ocean Life
No evidence of mermaids has ever been found....

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Atlantic heat constrains Arctic sea ice extent

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The Arctic sea ice cover is a sensitive indicator of climate variability and change. Researchers have for the first time quantified how Atlantic heat influences the sea ice extent in the Barents Sea, where the retreat in Arctic winter sea ice is the most pronounced....

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Greenland ice may exaggerate magnitude of 13,000-year-old deep freeze

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Ice samples pulled from nearly a mile below the surface of Greenland glaciers have long served as a historical thermometer, adding temperature data to studies of the local conditions up to the Northern Hemisphere’s climate. But the method — comparing the ratio of oxygen isotopes buried as snow fell over millennia — may not be such a straightforward indicator of air temperature....

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NOAA Aids Navigation for Vessel Delivering Massive Cranes to Port of Baltimore [What’s New]

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On June 20, the M/V Zhen Hua 13 delivered new cranes from China to the Port of Baltimore by navigating the waters of Chesapeake Bay. To reach this destination, the cranes had to clear a major obstacle—passing under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge outside of Annapolis.



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Significant sea-level rise in a two-degree warmer world

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Even if global warming is limited to two degrees Celsius, global mean sea level could continue to rise, reaching between 1.5 and four meters above present-day levels by the year 2300, with the best estimate being at 2.7 meters, according to a new study. However, emissions reductions that allow warming to drop below 1.5 degrees Celsius could limit the rise strongly....

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Remote Siberian lake holds clues to Arctic — and Antarctic — climate change

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Intense warm climate intervals -- warmer than scientists thought possible -- have occurred in the Arctic over the past 2.8 million years. That result comes from the first analyses of the longest sediment cores ever retrieved on land. They were obtained from beneath remote, ice-covered Lake El'gygytgyn in the northeastern Russian Arctic....

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Arctic climate more vulnerable than thought, maybe linked to Antarctic ice-sheet behavior

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First analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic provide dramatic, "astonishing" documentation that intense warm intervals, warmer than scientists thought possible, occurred there over the past 2.8 million years. Further, these extreme inter-glacial warm periods correspond closely with times when parts of Antarctica were ice-free and also warm, suggesting strong inter-hemispheric climate connectivity. The Polar Regions are much more vulnerable to change than once believed, they add....

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