The BBC reports that a humpback whale has made one of the longest and most unusual migrations ever recorded, possibly driven by climate change, scientists say. It was seen in the Pacific Ocean off Colombia in 2017 and then popped up … Continue reading
The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is facing an existential threat due to rising sea levels, caused by climate change. According to NASA, the sea level in Tuvalu has risen nearly 6 inches in the past 30 years and is expected … Continue reading
A recent article in the journal Oceanus, hosted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), raises the question, “Are offshore wind farms harming whales?” The short answer is “no.” They write: A collection of seemingly grass-roots organizations claim that offshore … Continue reading
The rapid warming of the Arctic, a definitive sign of climate change, is occurring even faster than previously described. A new report by the Finnish Meteorological Institute concludes that the Arctic has warmed at about four times the global average … Continue reading
On the United Nations World Oceans Day, here is a very well-done, short video on the role of the oceans in climate change. As greenhouse gases warm the Earth, our oceans play a significant role in absorbing heat that helps … Continue reading
Divers and scientists recorded the massive spawning of coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef last week in a yearly show of life that signals hope that the world’s biggest coral reef ecosystem can recover from climate change. “It’s a sign … Continue reading
The moon is wobbling. This is nothing new. First observed in 1728, the wobble is a cyclical shifting of the moon’s orbit around the earth that takes 18.6 years to complete. In half of this lunar cycle, Earth’s regular daily … Continue reading
The recent heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and Canada has proven deadly. The death toll from the record-breaking heatwave that struck the US Pacific Northwest last week has risen to nearly 200. British Columbia reported at least 719 people … Continue reading
A new study has determined that the vast Atlantic Ocean current circulation system, including the Gulf Stream, is at its weakest in a thousand years. The slowing of the current, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), could increase sea levels … Continue reading
As if a pandemic is not enough to worry about, the effects of climate change appear to be delivering some particularly nasty weather this year. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico have been described as being abnormally warm, freakishly … Continue reading
Climate change is affecting the oceans in a wide variety of ways. Oceans are warming and acidifying as temperatures rise and CO2 increases. Sea levels are rising as polar ice caps melt. Recently a study suggests that ocean currents have … Continue reading
As has so often been the case, predictions of the impact of climate change have been proven to be inaccurate. The problem is not that they have been too alarmist, but that they haven’t been alarmist enough. For the past … Continue reading
One of the better ways to tell if a model works at predicting the future is to run it in reverse to see how well it predicts the past. Climate change models so far have had their limitations. Most current … Continue reading
In the 1958 sci-fi/horror film, the Blob is a gooey mass from outer space which eventually grows the size of a small building while devouring everyone it encounters. The Blob cannot stand cold and is finally stopped by being airlifted … Continue reading
Following the example of Greta Thunberg, who traveled to a UN climate conference by sail in August, 36 young climate change activists set sail from Amsterdam on October 2, bound for COP25 – the United Nations Climate Conference. Rather than … Continue reading
A disturbing new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that the rate at which the world’s oceans are heating up is accelerating and that sea levels are rising more quickly than previous predictions. The Special Report … Continue reading
The Okjökull glacier, northeast of Reykjavik, was known simply as Ok to Icelanders. (In Icelandic, jökull means glacier.) In 1890, Ok’s ice covered 16sq km (6.2 square miles) but by 2012 it measured just 0.7sq km, according to a report … Continue reading
A new study published in the journal Nature suggests that over the last quarter-century, the oceans have been retaining 60% more heat than scientists had previously thought. If so, the Earth could be set to warm even faster than predicted. The … Continue reading
In 2010, a North Carolina state commission report predicted that sea levels on the state’s coast could rise as much as 39 inches by the year 2100, flooding billions of dollars’ worth of real estate and crippling much of the … Continue reading
Today, the New York Times featured an article titled — “Climate Change Brought a Lobster Boom. Now It Could Cause a Bust.” The article suggests that while rising water temperatures due to climate change have brought a boom in the … Continue reading