Ocean Research
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December 2010 Issue
Ocean Opportunity Embarks On Exhibition to Study TOTO
The nonprofit organization Ocean Opportunity recently announced that it has embarked on an expedition to explore and document the Tongue of the Ocean (TOTO), a deep oceanic trench in the Bahamas, to depths in excess of 300 feet. The expedition departed on November 12.
The deep-diving team (including Jeff Godfrey of the University of Connecticut and Michael Lombardi of Ocean Opportunity) will use advanced manned diving techniques to allow direct, hands-on access to the deep coral reef environment.
The studies will evaluate the biomechanics and efficiency of humans working at depth and will gather scientific data in this environment to better understand the biodiversity, natural history and transitional function of the deep reefs as a gateway from the shallow coral reef to the abyss.
Following the expedition, data and imagery gathered will be prepared for educational use and public display throughout the U.S., officials said. For more information, visit http://oceanopportunity.com.
NOAA-Sponsored Study Maps Offshore San Andreas Fault
For the first time, scientists are using advanced technology and an innovative research vessel to study, image and map the unexplored offshore northern San Andreas Fault from north of San Francisco, California, to its termination at the junction of three tectonic plates off Mendocino, California.
Scientists from NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, Oregon State University, the California Seafloor Mapping Program, the U.S. Geological Survey and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are using high-resolution sonar mapping, subsurface seismic data and digital camera imaging to create the first-ever 3D bathymetric-structural map modeling the undersea northern San Andreas Fault and its structure.
The science team is also exploring the fault to examine the relationships between major earthquakes and biological diversity. Evidence shows that active fluid and gas venting along such fast-moving tectonic systems create and recreate productive, unique and unexplored ecosystems.
Scripps, UCSD to Create Center Devoted to Climate Chemistry
Scientists in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have won a grant to study how chemistry influences climate and atmospheric processes.
The $1.5 million National Science Foundation award will fund the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Climate and the Environment (CAICE), which aims to determine how the chemical composition of aerosol particles and the chemical reactions occurring at their surface impact Earth's climate.
"We're going to understand how real systems behave and how chemistry affects climate," said the center's principal investigator, Kim Prather, an atmospheric chemistry professor at UCSD and Scripps Oceanography.
An existing wave tank on the Scripps campus will be modified to create CAICE's research centerpiece, a closed chamber that can simulate ocean-atmosphere interactions. Researchers will add various ingredients, from carbon dioxide to phytoplankton to varying levels of light.
"We're going to build an ocean and then we're going to build an atmosphere over the ocean," Prather said. "We'll be able to do all kinds of experiments in this microcosm."
The test tank could be ready for the center's experiments by January. For more information, visit http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu.
Atmospheric Dynamics, Not Ocean, Could Drive El Niño
Scientists generally believe that ocean dynamics are the primary factor controlling El Niño sea-surface temperature variability. However, a new study has shown that atmospheric dynamics can account for many of the features of El Niño that were previously thought to be controlled by ocean dynamics.
In the study, published in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters, Dietmar Dommenget of Monash University used a series of atmospheric model simulations coupled to a simple ocean model that contained no ocean dynamics. He found that El Niño-like variations in sea-surface temperature were produced in the simulations.
Although ocean dynamics are still a factor influencing El Niño events, the study suggests that atmospheric dynamics may be more important than previously thought in controlling El Niño.
Groundwater Depletion Rate Accelerating, Raising Sea Level
In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry underground stores of water has more than doubled, say scientists who have conducted a global assessment of groundwater use.
People are drawing so much water from below ground that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 percent of the annual sea-level rise across the planet, the researchers found.
The findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters.
In the study, which compares estimates of groundwater added by rain and other sources to the amounts being removed for agriculture and other uses, the team, led by Marc Bierkens of Utrecht University, tapped a database of global groundwater information, including maps of groundwater regions and water demand. The researchers also used models to estimate the rates at which groundwater is both added to aquifers and withdrawn.
Most water extracted from underground stocks ends up in the ocean, the researchers noted.
The team estimates the contribution of groundwater depletion to sea-level rise to be 0.8 millimeters per year, which is about a quarter of the current total rate of sea level rise of 3.1 millimeters per year, about as much sea-level rise as caused by the melting of glaciers and icecaps outside of Greenland and Antarctica, the researchers said.
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