Voyage into Ancient Climates

                                                                                                    JOIDES Resolution

Researchers from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton are setting off on a mission to drill the deep seabed of the north Atlantic for secrets about the climate during the planet's last lengthy spell of extreme warmth, which happened around 30 million years ago.

From the drillship JOIDES Resolution, the scientists will drill down into the seabed up to 5km below, recovering sediment cores that will shed light on long-ago climates. Analysing these cores will provide one of the world's longest and most undisturbed records of climate change, providing detailed information about ancient ocean circulation and weather patterns.

The mission focuses on the sediment around the Newfoundland Ridges, hundreds of kilometres off the Canadian coast. It will sample 11 sites, coring down as far as 400m into the mud to find sites where ancient climates were affected by CO₂-fed global warming. The technique works because as atmospheric CO₂ rises, the ocean becomes more acidic; this changes the types of sediment deposited on the sea floor.

The deep waters of the north Atlantic are forced to flow over the Newfoundland Ridges, and two major current systems - the north-flowing Gulf Stream and the south-flowing Deep Western Boundary Current cross over around the planned drilling area. The sediments they leave behind preserve a record of their flow strength and chemical composition, as well as of the living things in the water at the time.

The rate of sediment deposition also depends on the strength of the current passing over the seabed, so NOC scientists plan to use their findings to gain a detailed history of the Deep Western Boundary Current, which runs from the Greenland Sea down to the east coast of North America, and is thought to help drive the Gulf Stream, which in turn profoundly influences the European climate. So the results will help researchers understand the intricate relationship between ocean circulation and the climate.

The voyage is planned to last until early August.

Planet Earth Online 

NASA Robot Working On Ocean Energy

NASA surely knows how to surprise us, when it comes to environment and ecology care. Their latest robot is an invention, which can perform a series of new eco friendly actions and it is made with newest technology available.

The Solo-TREC diver can dive and swim without any time borders, because of its unique way of powering. Its source is actually unlimited and is nothing else than the ocean temperatures.

The thermal energy from the ocean temperature is the only fuel that the Solo-TREC needed and used on its first test last year on the coast of Hawaii.

There the robot was making three trips per day and was tested as the best, when it comes to collecting information from the bottom of the ocean.

The robot will be used as a researcher for the ocean salinity.

The successful invention, which was created in a completely green environment, is entirely eco- friendly and just the first step, which NASA plans to take in this direction.

According to several sources, NASA is going to release more robots and will use them for the control and monitoring of the ocean conditions. The plans of NASA are to monitor all of the world oceans and get more detailed information.

The Solo-TREC doesn’t require a battery, so we are expecting the next step to be developing similar devices for different environmental goals.

The New Ecologist 

Damage to World's Oceans to Reach $2 Trillion a Year by Nina Chestney

          Cost of ocean degradation put at 0.37 pct of future GDP

The cost of damage to the world's oceans from climate change could reach $2 trillion a year by 2100 if measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions are not stepped up, a study by marine experts said on Wednesday.

The study found that without action to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions, the global average temperature could rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century causing ocean acidification, sea level rise, marine pollution, species migration and more intense tropical cyclones. It would also threaten coral reefs, disrupt fisheries and deplete fish stocks.

In the study, "Valuing the Ocean", marine experts led by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) analysed the most severe threats facing the world's marine environment and estimated the cost of damage from global warming.

It found nitrogen-rich fertilisers and waste would strip more ocean areas of oxygen, causing what is known as hypoxic dead zones, which are already found in more than 500 locations.

"By 2100, the cost of damage if we do not radically cut emissions rises to $1.98 trillion, or 0.37 percent of global gross domestic product," the SEI said.

The loss of tourism would incur the highest cost at $639 billion per year. The loss of the ocean carbon sink, the seas' ability to soak up carbon dioxide (CO2), would cost almost $458 billion, the study showed. Warmer water holds less CO2.

RADICAL TECHNOLOGIES

If cuts in emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases were carried out more urgently and temperature increases were limited to 2.2 degrees C, nearly $1.4 trillion of the total cost could be avoided, the study found.

However, such progress would require the widespread use of radical carbon removal technologies like sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Frank Ackerman, one of the report's authors told Reuters.

"The faster we stop emissions rising, the lower the damage will be. But on current technology, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up on a 4 degree C pathway," said Ackerman, senior economist and director of the Climate Economics Group at SEI's U.S. Center.

Read more@reuters.com 

Manx Company Prepares for Titanic Encounter by Adrian Darbyshire

   The bow of the Titanic on the seabed and, below, arriving at Southampton ahead of her ill-fated maiden voyage

AN Isle of Man-based deep sea research and exploration company is taking bookings for what could be the last ever diving expedition to the Titanic.

This expedition will be particularly poignant as this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.

Ramsey-based Deep Ocean Expeditions has organised multiple dives to the wreck over the past decade – but this year’s expeditions will be its first since 2005.

It doesn’t come cheap. The price of the 14-day trip, including an eight to 10- hour dive tour of the Titanic in one of two Russian Mir submersibles, comes to just under $60,000 a person.

Fewer than 150 people have ever visited the remains of the Titanic which were discovered in 1985 by oceanographer and marine biologist Dr Robert Ballard.

But those adventurers lucky enough to book a place on the Centenary Expedition will descend 12,500 feet to the bed of the North Atlantic and explore the ghostly wreck – seeing with their own eyes the Titanic’s lookout, bridge, telemotor and other artefacts that played a defining role in the greatest maritime disaster of its age.

Due to high demand for what is likely to be the firm’s last dive to the Titanic, four trips have been organised in July and August this year for the Titanic Centenary Expedition which is in partnership with the PP Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, part of the Russian Academy of Science.

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Action Plan for Nation's First-Ever Ocean Policy Imminent by Sarah Chasis Director NRDC's Ocean Initiative

The year 2012 promises hope for the future of America’s oceans. Changes are expected that will help the creatures that live below the surface, the people who live and vacation along our coasts, and the clean energy developers who want to tap into the vast wind potential that lies off our shores.

Any day now, the National Ocean Council -- a forum for federal agencies -- will release a draft blueprint of how we should best tackle the major threats facing ocean life, such as ocean acidification, habitat protection, water quality and pollution. We are looking forward to a robust public discussion of how we can help.

Putting a strong ocean action plan in place is one of the key deliverables of the national ocean policy set into motion by President Obama in 2010. The national ocean policy -- for the first time ever-- calls on agencies to coordinate their offshore work and ensure that our oceans will be healthy for this and future generations’ use.

The executive order that established this policy also called for comprehensive, regional ocean planning to evaluate the uses of our oceans -- recreation, fishing, tourism, industry, energy and conservation -- and identify ways to manage these uses sustainably so that future generations, as well as our own, can continue to enjoy the ocean’s vast resources. NRDC just developed a basic fact sheet on the value of this kind of smart ocean planning -- it’s exactly the sort of common sense process we need to get our watery home in order. And this short film narrated by Philippe Cousteau -- a tireless ocean advocate and grandson of the famed underwater explorer, Jacques Cousteau -- also helps explain how this kind of sensible ocean planning can improve the health of our seas.

Read more @ HuffingtonPost.com 

Rising Sea Levels Endanger the Delta by Louise Sarant

The Nile Delta region produces no less than 65 percent of the Egypt’s total agricultural production. It is also part of the country’s most densely populated regions; half of Egypt’s ever expending population lives in this triangle of fertile land, a zone identified as one of the world’s most vulnerable to climate change. Since the Delta’s coastal cities are built at a very low elevation, a mere 0.5 centimeter rise in sea level could plunge cities like Alexandria, Damietta, Rashid and Port Said underwater, displacing millions of inhabitants from their homes and destroying the region’s thriving agriculture. But as the sea nibbles bits of coast, the sea water makes its way underground and invades delta aquifers, posing an immediate threat to crops and yields.

The Nile Delta aquifer is one of the largest groundwater reservoirs in the world. Spread over 6 million acres, it is immensely precious for Egypt. Because sea water is denser than freshwater (one cubic meter of sea water contains 35kg of salt), sea water easily migrates into the aquifer, mixing with the freshwater and corrupting it.  

Mosaad Kotb is the head of the Central Laboratory for Agricultural Climate (CLAC), a central laboratory of the Agricultural Research Center. His research unit, which focuses on the implications of climate change on the agricultural sector, installed bathometers — PVC tubes that measure sea level — 6 months ago along the coasts to identify the rate of sea level increases and incursions into groundwater. “We are starting to collect the data now, but we are aware that the results won’t give us the solution on how to mitigate the seeping of saline water into the aquifer in the long term,” Kotb admits.

He explains that the construction of Aswan dam in 1973 deprived the delta of its perennial layer of silt that replenished every year with floods and restored nutrients to the soil. “The soil compacts with time, so this phenomenon combined with the sea level rise is extremely alarming,” he says. Some farmers have taken matters into their own hands by adding an extra 50-centimeter-high sand bed atop their fields to combat rising sea levels, but the results are inconclusive.

“The sand is poor in nutrients, and needs to be sprayed consistently with fertilizers to grow anything,” Kotb explains.

Read more: 

Oceanography from Space

A powerful combination of data from NASA satellites and traditional sampling has led to the discovery of a new pathway of freshwater in the Arctic Ocean. Knowing the pathways of freshwater is important to understanding global climate because freshwater protects sea ice by helping create a strongly stratified cold layer between the ice and warmer, saltier water below that comes into the Arctic from the Atlantic Ocean, according to Jamie Morison of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle. Morison and co-authors from the UW and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory published their findings in the Jan. 5, 2012 edition of Nature.