Browsing: global warming

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Maine Lobstermen Taking Hits from Warming Waters, Trade Wars

Lobstermen in Maine are taking a double hit these days, one from global warming, the other from the impending trade wars. Both can have long-term consequences for an industry that accounts for half a billion dollars a year. Water temperature in the Gulf of Maine has been rising since the early 1980s, as a result of global warming. Until recently, this was a good thing, with lobsters – and the entire lobster industry – thriving. But now we may be on the downward cusp of too much of a good thing. The waters are getting too hot and lobsters are…

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New Report: Ice Melting Faster Than Ever in Antarctic, Sea Level Rising

Ice is melting faster in the Antarctic than scientists had predicted. Indeed, the ice sheet is melting an a rapidly increasing rate, and has tripled in just the past ten years. This ice melt has poured more than 200 billion tons of ice into the ocean each year. It also has raised sea levels half a millimeter each year. These are the basic findings of a new study by a team of 80 Antarctic experts from 14 countries, as reported in The Washington Post. The scientists are worried about rising sea levels in low-lying cities and communities if the rate…

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Largest Dead Zone in the World (Where Ocean Does Not Have Enough Oxygen to Support Life) Found in Gulf of Oman

The largest ocean dead zone in the world, larger than the state of Florida, has just been found in the Gulf of Oman, a strait bordered by Iran, Pakistan, Oman and the UAE, measuring about 63,700 square miles. The dead zone is not only the largest but also the thickest in the world, according to researchers from the University of East Anglia, who studied the area for eight months, using underwater Seaglider robots to feed data to satellites. The scientists had last measured the gulf in the 1990s, and now report a “dramatic increase” in the size and severity of…

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New Study: Ship Traffic and Fishing Boats Moving Closer to North Pole Every Year. Now Transiting Treacherous Northwest Passage in February

Melting sea ice in the Arctic means that the fabled Northwest Passage, the sea route over the top of the world linking the Atlantic and the Pacific that has trapped explorers and frustrated mariners for hundreds of years, is opening up. Now a new study using 120 million data points tracking ship traffic there over seven years shows exactly how much and how fast the area is changing. Indeed, it found that the center of ship activity in the Arctic moved 186 miles closer to the North Pole from 2009 to 2016. Researchers from Tufts University and the Woods Hole…

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A Weakening Gulf Stream, and Rising Sea Levels, Mean More Trouble for the New England Coast

A weaker Gulf Stream, combined with overall global warming, could mean a lot of trouble for the coast of New England, according to this well-documented story from Weather Underground meteorologist Bob Henson.  The New England coast already has been hit hard by storms and surging high water (see the picture of Scituate, Massachusetts, above) in the past few months. Two nor’easters earlier this month produced two of the three highest water levels ever recorded in Boston Harbor, and things could get worse. A basic problem is that the sea level along the Northeast coast is rising faster than it is…

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Heading for the North Pole? Take a Sweater

This is usually the coldest time of the year at the North Pole, where the sun won’t rise until March 20. But recently there’s been a historic thaw. Indeed, last weekend the temperature rose above freezing, to 35 degrees, at the pole. Scientists have recorded what they call a warm air intrusion through the central Arctic this winter. In the area north of 80 degrees latitude, temperatures are 36 degrees above normal. Such intrusions have become more frequent and more intense. There were only four between 1980 and 2010, but now there have been four in the past five years.…

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Coral Ecosystems in Great Barrier Reef Are Being Killed by Rising Sea Temperatures, Scientists Report

The Great Barrier Reef, the fishing, diving and tourist destination stretching hundreds of miles off the coast of Australia near Cairns, is in trouble. A new study, published today in Nature, says that huge sections of the coral ecosystem are already dead, or are dying, because of rising sea temperatures. (When the water is too hot, corals turn white, as in the picture above.) “We didn’t expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years,” said Terry P. Hughes, an Australian scientist and lead author of the Nature report. “In the north I…

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Is the Great Barrier Reef Toast? Read this…

The Great Barrier Reef off the eastern coast of Australia has been around for 25 million years, stretching over 1,400 miles and containing some 2,900 individual reefs, not to mention 1,625 species of fish and 450 species of coral. But now with climate change and warmer water and catastrophic bleaching, according to this story 50 percent of the coral in the warmer, northern section has already died. What happens next? http://www.outsideonline.com/2112086/obituary-great-barrier-reef-25-million-bc-2016?utm_content=buffera9dd8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=facebookpost

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Tangier Island is Sinking as the Chesapeake is Rising

Great story about Tangier Island in the lower Chesapeake, which is being threatened by rising sea levels, in The New York Times Magazine today. The future there seems  pretty bleak. I took the picture above four years ago on Smith Island, just a few miles north of Tangier, which is facing the same fate. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/magazine/should-the-united-states-save-tangier-island-from-oblivion.html

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