Oceans

A satellite image of a phytoplankton bloom off the coast of St. John’s, N.L. Credit: NASA, MODIS Rapid Response Every year in the mid-latitudes of the planet, a peculiar phenomenon known as the phytoplankton spring bloom occurs. Visible from space, spectacular large and ephemeral filament-like shades of green and blue are shaped by the ocean currents. …

A combination of AI, a wild 1970s plan to build underwater cities, and a designer creating furniture on the seabed around the Bahamas might be the solution to the widespread destruction of coral reefs. It could even save the world from coastal erosion.Industrial designer Tom Dixon and technologist Suhair Khan, founder of AI incubator Open-Ended Design, are collaborating on regenerating the ocean floor. “Coral reefs are endangered by climate change, shipping, development, and construction—but they’re vital,” Khan explains.…

The Solar System doesn't get much colder than the Kuiper Belt.Out past the orbit of Pluto, far from the warmth of the Sun, drifts a vast expanse of icy rocks and dwarf planets thought too cold to be little more than snowballs in outer space.As the New Horizons data on Pluto showed, however, appearances may be deceptive. And now scientists have discovered that two other dwarf planets may be keeping secrets.Eris and Makemake are dwarf planets that, like Pluto, hang out in the Kuiper Belt. And, also like Pluto, they have…

A study predicts the extension of the Gibraltar Strait subduction zone into the Atlantic, potentially creating an Atlantic ring of fire in about 20 million years. Utilizing advanced computational models, this research sheds light on the dynamic nature of oceanic life cycles and the formation of new subduction zones. It offers new insights into the Gibraltar subduction zone’s activity and its implications for seismic activity, emphasizing the importance of preparedness and the study of subduction invasion as a key process…

Scientists are zeroing in on the virus species in the world’s oceans that are most likely to combat climate change by helping trap carbon dioxide in seawater. Credit: SciTechDaily.comResearchers begin applying lessons learned from the ocean to soils.Armed with a catalog of hundreds of thousands of DNA and RNA virus species in the world’s oceans, scientists are now zeroing in on the viruses most likely to combat climate change by helping trap carbon dioxide in seawater or, using similar techniques, different viruses that…

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This weekly newsletter is part of a CBC News initiative entitled "Our Changing Planet" to show and explain the effects of climate change. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday.This week: From fashion to burials: How fungi can help fight climate change 2024 has barely started and is already threatening to set temperature records World's globetrotting animals at risk due to habitat…

Just last week, Google unveiled its new AI chatbot lineup, featuring Gemini Advanced—its best bot, based on its most powerful large language model, Gemini 1.0 Ultra. But Gemini 1.0 Ultra’s reign as the company’s flagship LLM could turn out to be brief.Today the company is announcing Gemini 1.5 Pro, an update to its middle-tier LLM. It says the improvements result in an LLM in the same zip code, power-wise, as Gemini 1.0 Ultra. And in a briefing for reporters on Wednesday, Google DeepMind principal scientist Oriol Vinyals…

So what’s going on here? For one, the oceans have been steadily warming over the decades, absorbing something like 90 percent of the extra heat that humans have added to the atmosphere. “The oceans are our saviors, in a way,” says biological oceanographer Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. “Things might be a lot worse in terms of climate impacts, because a lot of that heat is not only kept at the surface, it’s taken to depths.”A major concern with such warm surface temperatures…

NASA's newest climate satellite rocketed into orbit Thursday to survey the world's oceans and atmosphere in never-before-seen detail.SpaceX launched the Pace satellite on its $948-million US mission before dawn from Cape Canaveral, Fla., with the Falcon rocket heading south over the Atlantic Ocean to achieve a rare polar orbit.The satellite will spend at least three years studying the oceans from 676 kilometres up, as well as the atmosphere. It will scan the globe daily with two of the science instruments. A third…

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.When governments find themselves fighting the threat of coastal erosion, their default response tends to be pretty simple: If sand is disappearing from a beach, they pump in more sand to replace it. This strategy, known as “beach nourishment,” has become a cornerstone of coastal defenses around the world, complementing hard structures like sea walls. North Carolina, for instance, has dumped more than 100 million tons of sand onto its…