Heat waves over the ocean have ballooned and are wreaking havoc on marine life

Heat waves over the world’s oceans are becoming longer and more frequent, damaging coral reefs and creating chaos for aquatic species. A study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications found a 54 percent increase in the number of days in which heat waves have cooked the oceans since 1925.

(Institute of Atmospheric Physics)

The rise in these marine heat waves has occurred while ever more heat is stored in the ocean because of accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The ocean heat content in 2017 was the highest in recorded history, noted Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Trenberth said in an email that ocean heat waves will necessarily increase given the building stockpile of heat, which has been measured from the surface down to more than a mile deep (2,000 meters).

Read Jason Samenow’s story from The Washington Post - “Heat waves over the ocean have ballooned and are wreaking havoc on marine life.”

Microplastic pollution in oceans is far worse than feared, say scientists

The number of tiny plastic pieces polluting the world’s oceans is vastly greater than thought, new research indicates.

Plastic pollution is known to harm marine life and can
enter the human food chain via our food and water.

The work reveals the highest microplastic pollution yet discovered anywhere in the world in a river near Manchester in the UK. It also shows that the major floods in the area in 2015-16 flushed more than 40bn pieces of microplastic into the sea.

The surge of such a vast amount of microplastic from one small river catchment in a single event led the scientists to conclude that the current estimate for the number of particles in the ocean – five trillion – is a major underestimate.

Read Damian Carrington’s story from The Guardian - “Microplastic pollution in oceans is far worse than feared, say scientists.”

Arctic drilling collapse good news for World Oceans Day

It’s often hard to find good news when it comes to the world’s oceans. Overfishing, coral bleaching, dead zones, acidification, pollution, oil spills, melting sea ice, sea level rise, the odd Cold War-era Russian rocket crashing into Baffin Bay with some leftover toxic fuel in the tank: There are as many marine bad news stories as there used to be fish in the overfished sea.

So on World Oceans Day a bit of positive news is a breath of fresh air — or gill-full of clean water.

Repsol, a Spanish oil company which owned a significant portion of the drilling leases for Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, abandoned 55 of them last week and plans to drop the remaining 38 next year.

“Repsol is in the process of relinquishing its Chukchi Sea acreage position offshore Alaska,” Repsol spokeswoman Jan Sieving said in a statement.

Read the ClimateProgress story - “Last Oil Company Pulls Out Of Arctic Offshore Drilling Efforts In Chukchi Sea.”

Plastic will clog up the world's oceans by 2050

There is a lot of plastic in the world’s oceans.

Plastic will be more plentiful in our
oceans than fish by 2050.

It coagulates into great floating “garbage patches” that cover large swaths of the Pacific. It washes up on urban beaches and remote islands, tossed about in the waves and transported across incredible distances before arriving, unwanted, back on land. It has wound up in the stomachs of more than half the world’s sea turtles and nearly all of its marine birds, studies say. And if it was bagged up and arranged across all of the world’s shorelines, we could build a veritable plastic barricade between ourselves and the sea.

But that quantity pales in comparison with the amount that the World Economic Forum expects will be floating into the oceans by the middle of the century.

Read The Washington Post story - “By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans, study says.”

Oceans warming at quickening rate: new study

The world's oceans are
warming at a quickening rate.

The world’s oceans are warming at a quickening rate, with the past 20 years accounting for half of the increase in ocean heat content that has occurred since pre-industrial times, a new study has found.

US scientists discovered that much of the extra heat in the ocean is buried deep underwater, with 35% of the additional warmth found at depths below 700 meters. This means far more heat is present in the far reaches of the ocean than 20 years ago, when it contained just 20% of the extra heat produced from the release of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution.

ReadThe Guardian story - “World's oceans warming at increasingly faster rate, new study finds.”