ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATEA story that should have celebrated the birth of another whale into the world ended in tragedy Monday, after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission made the decision to put two sperm whales down. Though often rapid response units are able to successful push whales back out to shore after a brief beaching, the circumstances surrounding the beaching led local officials to make the life-or-death decision.
Think that you’ve got a long commute into the office every morning? Think again. While you may be used to sitting in traffic for hours on end, it turns out that one little songbird’s lengthy migration will put your commute to shame.
Think that you’ve got a long commute into the office every morning? Think again. While you may be used to sitting in traffic for hours on end, it turns out that one little songbird’s lengthy migration will put your commute to shame.
Using coastal waters can often be quite a finicky endeavor. Working your plans around algal blooms, red tides and even the occasional sewage mishap, can often be a pretty unpleasant mess. But it turns out that swimmers and surfers may have more to fear than getting a little dirty at the beach. Aside from Giardia, a parasite that is often passed in coastal waters, it turns out that recreational swimmers at local beaches may also be at a significantly higher risk of transmitting deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria—landing them in the hospital or worse.
The 2014-15 winter was one of the warmest ever recorded in history according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. However, there is one area of the North Atlantic that hasn't been affected by this warming trend and the phenomenon has been the same since around 1970.
It’s a common belief that when you think of neurobiology you often imagine the brain and the central nervous system one neuron at a time. And for many years, that’s exactly how researchers had to approach the larger questions. By tagging in particular neurotransmitters, that would convey the passing of one signal from neuron to neuron, researchers were able to follow the path of a signal back and forth along an axon. But now, with new imaging technology and a new model organism in mind, researchers in neurobiology are seeking new ways in which we study the brain—mapping neural circuits and their functions in great detail, on the large scale.
Aurora Hints at Ocean under Ganymede The universe is pretty lousy with water, it's actually one of the most common molecules in the universe. But most of it is in the form of either ice or vapor.
How strong are the sun and the moon’s pull on the tides? A lot stronger than you may have ever believed. In what happened to be a perfect trifecta of cosmic events, this Friday’s alignment allowed for a supermoon, a total solar eclipse, and perhaps one of the greatest ocean surges our generation has seen since the turn of the 21st century. In fact, in what happened to be a tourist’s dream, the picturesque Mont Saint Michel Abbey on the coast of France was turned into a island for a brief while as the “tide of the century” submerged the path that leads to its fortified walls.
While much of the northeastern and central United States froze to death this snowy winter, the cold chill didn't extend to the north as scientists have discovered that the winter ice levels are at record lows.
In the midst of unimaginable destruction, meteorologists say that a cyclone, designated “Cyclone Pam”, will continue to devastate islands in the South Pacific even after the storm brought torrential rains and fierce winds hour after hour since the start of the weekend.
It appears that while officials with the NOAA are declaring the event an El Niño class, this year’s events won't exactly be a repeat of the 1998 El Niño that many had hoped for.
El Niño has finally arrived according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Associations. The report by the NOAA was issued nearly a year after it was forecast that El Niño would occur sometime last year.
Scientists believe that the Red planet once had more water on its surface than is found today in Earth's Arctic Ocean. However, over time Mars has lost 87% of this water to space.
Scientists have discovered that Arctic sea ice, the ice that freezes and floats on waters in the Arctic, is thinning at much faster rate that they previously thought.
A rare sea creature found off the coast of Australia in January has finally made its way to the Australian Museum for study. The creature, a rare goblin shark often referred to as an "alien of the deep" was originally found off the coast of Australia by a fishermen that has since donated it to the museum.
New research published in the Journal Geology suggests there is a link between the activity of the sun and sea temperatures and its effects are more significant when the Earth is cooler. The sun is already known to play a part in variations of our weather but this is the first time that scientists have observed that solar activity also affects sea surface temperatures.
A new study published in the journal Science brings us closer to understanding the role our oceans play and how they have influenced our climate. Scientists hope this knowledge will help them learn how the oceans can help us cool down the planet and neutralize global warming.
It is no secret that greenhouse gas emissions, and especially carbon dioxide, are on the rise much to the alarm of governments, scientists and environmentalists around the globe. These gases get their name from their effect of trapping the suns energy inside the atmosphere causing temperatures to rise. However, scientists had not directly observed this effect, until now.
If you were in the area of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii last week and thought that you were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of humpback whale, you were probably right. But the sighting wasn’t such as a rare sight, with the more than 25 ton mammal acting as a sitting duck along the Big Island’s Kona Coast.
While growing climate changes and ocean acidification pose particular threats to coral reef species around the world, it appears that researchers may have good news on the horizon. While many reefs have been well-documented and researched, a new study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports reveals that new reefs may be right under our noses, and they be far out of the tropics.
If you’ve ever been pulled out to sea by a riptide you know the true power of the oceans. When a tide changes, waves can crash down on the shores with immense power, and if you’re destined to live on these shores you’d obviously have to endure a lot. And in a new study published this week in the journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers from the University of Portsmouth and the Queen Mary University of London are revealing just how much.