Sustained, natural oil seepage from the seafloor is common off southern California, and is of great interest to resource managers, who are tasked with distinguishing natural from anthropogenic oil sources. The major purpose of this study was [...] enable differentiation of the highly similar Monterey Formation oils from Outer Continental Shelf production and adjacent natural seeps.
A submarine volcanic eruption at Monowai Seamount added 8.75 million cubic meters of rock in just five days. The volcano is located in the Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand at the southern end of the Tonga Ridge near Kermadec volcanoes.
“This image shows rainfall totals between Papua New Guinea and Fiji from March 26 to April 2, 2012. By April 2, 2012, heavy rains [in Fiji] had claimed at least three lives, [...] washed out roads, severed drinking water supplies, downed power lines, and hampered communications.” Quoted from the Earth Observatory press release.
“This visualization shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through December 2007. The visualization does not include a narration or annotations; the goal was to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience.” Quoted from the NASA visualization release.
Kiribati (formerly known as the Gilbert Islands) has over 100,000 residents who live on 32 atolls and one coral island. Sea level rise threatens their survival. The nation contemplates buying a large tract of land on Fiji’s main island as a future home.
LiveScience has an interesting article on the forms of life encountered around a deep-sea vent system at the boundary of the Cocos and Caribbean Plates off the west coast of Costa Rica.
Could a partnership between a commercial telecommunications company planning an undersea cable across the Pacific Ocean and science researchers seeing ocean bottom monitoring be a great opportunity for both?
The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011 caused millions of tons of debris to be swept into the Pacific Ocean. Now winds and currents are carrying the debris eastward
An international team of scientists has documented a regular, significant and unexpected increase in the amount of particulate matter exported to the deep sea in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre that may be related to day length.
“The TsunamiReady Program, developed by the National Weather Service, is designed to help cities, towns, counties, universities and other large sites in coastal areas reduce the potential for disastrous tsunami-related consequences.” NOAA has educational materials available for people of all ages.
“NASA and Ohio State University researchers have discovered the major tsunami generated by the Japanearthquake of March 2011 was a long-hypothesized ‘merging tsunami.’ The tsunami doubled in intensity over rugged ocean ridges, amplifying its destructive power at landfall.”
An article on the Scientific American website reports that seafloor movement during the Fukushima Earthquake was as much as 50 meters laterally and 16 meters vertically.
The West Mata Volcano – at 4000 feet below the ocean’s surface – is the deepest documented volcanic eruption. The volcano is located near Fiji in the southwestern Pacific.
An article on the Syracuse.com website explains how about 20 million tons of floating debris from Japan’s March 11th earthquake and tsunami is moving across the Pacific and is expected to wash ashore on the Hawaiian Islands and the US west coast.
Sea Grant Alaska has a collection of teaching and learning resources that can be used to create multiple lessons about seamounts for middle school students.
Activities include: learning how seamounts form, mapping seamounts and building a seamount model from a topographic map.
“The critical low levels of freshwater in Tuvalu and Tokelau are just further wake-up calls about the vulnerability of SIDS [small island developing States] to the threats posed by increasing demands on natural resources…” Quoted from the United Nations press release.
“A technology commonly used to map the bottom of the deep ocean can also detect gas seeps in the water column.” Quoted from the University of New Hampshire news release.
“Scientists believe that the additional carbon dioxide played a key role in warming the planet and melting the continental ice sheets. They have long hypothesized that the source of the gas was the deep ocean.” Quoted from the University of Michigan news release.
“In a matter of five days, the Philippines and southeastern Asia were hammered by two intense tropical storms in late September and early October 2011. Several months worth of rain fell within a week—a deluge even by tropical standards—on Luzon in the northern Philippines, as well as in northern Vietnam and the Chinese island of Hainan.” Quoted from the NASA image release.
The new issue of Lite Geology by the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources has an interesting article titled: “Ancient Tsunamis from Meteorite Impacts”.
“NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday and 1:09 a.m. EDT Saturday. The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California said the satellite penetrated the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. The precise re-entry time and location are not yet known with certainty.” Quoted from the NASA press release.
“Earth’s deep oceans may absorb enough heat at times to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade–even in the midst of longer-term warming.” Quoted from the National Science Foundation press release.
Some members of Congress recommend opening portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the outer continental shelf for oil and natural gas drilling as a way to create jobs and cut the deficit.
This isn’t news but the Oregon State University website has an excellent article titled: “Super-Scale Slumping of the Southern Oregon Cascadia Margin: Tsunamis, Tectonic Erosion, and Extension of the Forearc” with great seafloor maps and seismic sections. Be sure to enlarge the images.
This NASA video explains how surface ocean currents are driven by wind while deeper currents are driven by density. “Aquarius salinity data, combined with data from other sensors that measure sea level, ocean color, temperature, winds, and rainfall, will give us a much clearer picture of how the ocean works.” Quoted from the NASA video release.
Scientists can now remotely monitor the ocean’s changing chemistry with help from some of the five-foot-tall Argo floats that drift with deep ocean currents and transmit data via satellite back to land.
An opportunity to attend a December-February field camp located on the Indian-Australian/Pacific plate boundary. The course provides training in basic through to more advanced field geological methods, with applications to geological problems in the varied structural and geomorphic settings of New Zealand. Many students from the USA have completed the course.
“Last spring, a volcano erupted 425 kilometers (about 265 miles) off the Oregon coast and far below the surface, at Axial Seamount. No one was aware for months. Now, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) will survey the site and stream live video of the volcano. It’s the first live video since the volcano spewed massive amounts of lava on April 6.” Quoted from the National Science Foundation news release.
“The Sea in many places is here cover’d with a kind of a brown scum, such as Sailors generally call spawn; upon our first seeing it, it alarm’d us, thinking we were among Shoals, but we found the same depth of Water were it was as in other places.” Sailing through the Coral Sea outside the Great Barrier Reef, Captain James Cook made those observations on August 28, 1770. His journals contain the first mention of the long brown filaments of cyanobacteria that are common along the Australian coast.
“A team of scientists just discovered a new eruption of Axial Seamount, an undersea volcano located about 250 miles off the Oregon coast – and one of the most active and intensely studied seamounts in the world.” Quoted from the Oregon State University news release.
Russia’s climate agency said that ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has melted over 50% more than average allowing commercial shipping through the Northern Sea Route that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific along the Siberian coastline. Sovcomflot is transporting cargoes of natural gas concentrate on the route.
“The ebb and flow of the ocean tides, generally thought to be one of the most predictable forces on Earth, are actually quite variable over long time periods, in ways that have not been adequately accounted for in most evaluations of prehistoric sea level changes.” Quoted from the Oregon State University news release.
China recently set a national depth record for a manned submersible by diving to 5057 meters below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Next year they hope to set a world record by diving to 7000 meters.
“Knowing that the U.S. west coast was battered during the winter before last by a climatic pattern expected more often in the future, scientists have now pieced together a San Diego-to-Seattle assessment of the damage wrought by that winter’s extreme waves and higher-than-usual water levels.” Quoted from the USGS news release.
The Oregon Department of Geology has released a special paper on tsunami inundation at Bandon, Coos County, Oregon using hypothetical Cascadia and Alaskaearthquake scenarios. Also released was a revised Bandon tsunami evacuation brochure.
“As one of the planet’s largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.” Quoted from the University of Wisconsin-Madison news release.
This video summarizes the new discovery of muds, rich in rare earth elements, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Japanese researchers believe that excavating one square kilometer of the mud will yield enough rare earth elements to satisfy 1/5 of the world’s annual consumption.
“The Japanese team found deep-sea mud containing high concentrations of rare-earth elements and yttrium at numerous sites throughout the southeastern and north-central parts of the Pacific Ocean.” Quote from the Wall Street Journal.
“New samples of rock and sediment from the depths of the eastern Pacific Ocean may help explain the cause of large, destructive earthquakes similar to the Tohoku Earthquake that struck Japan in mid-March.” Quoted from the National Science Foundation press release.
This NOAA video explains the basics of tsunamis, what you should know if you live near or visit an area where tsunamis can occur, and how to protect yourself if a tsunami occurs near you.
“This potentially deadly force is the #1 safety threat at beaches – it’s called a rip current. Rip currents are fast, powerful channels of water flowing away from the beach and out past the breaking waves. And before you realize it, you can get dragged out far from the shore.” Quoted from the NOAA video transcript.
The island of Samoa will skip December 30 this year to align its date more closely with Australia – on the other side of the International Date Line – where most of its business is associated.
“The Cascadia Subduction Zone, which marks the most active seismic region in Canada, comprises the plate boundary between the oceanic Juan de Fuca Plate and the continental North America Plate.” Quoted from the Geological Survey of Canada article.
“Follow the Pacific Nearshore Project as researchers from the USGS, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and other institutions sail Alaskan waters to study sea otters and investigate coastal health.” Quoted from the USGS project descripton.
“The magnitude 9 earthquake and resulting tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 were like a one-two punch – first violently shaking, then swamping the islands. [...] It was not appreciated before this earthquake that this size of earthquake was possible on this plate boundary.” Quoted from the Sanford University press release.
Google Earth now has high resolution maps of the seafloor that show submarine canyons, underwater volcanoes, faults, oceanic ridges and many other features.
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