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NEWS RELEASES
WHOI scientists aim to improve the study of marine heatwaves
Researchers call for regional and context-specific approaches to these extreme events
Coastal retreat in Alaska is accelerating because of compound climate impacts
Observations have shown coastal erosion as an increasing Arctic hazard, but other hazards—including sea level rise and permafrost thaw subsidence—have received less attention.
A new report on coastal resilience
New report released during NY Climate Week and upcoming UN General Assembly high-level plenary meeting on threats posed by sea level rise
Can adding iron to the ocean help it absorb CO2?
A newly published article spells out the work needed to assess the potential of ocean iron fertilization as a low cost, scalable, and rapidly deployable method of mCDR.
Sea Surface Temperature Research Provides Clear Evidence of Human-Caused Climate Change
New oceanic research provides clear evidence of a human “fingerprint” on climate change and shows that specific signals from human activities have altered the seasonal cycle amplitude of sea surface temperatures.
WHOI | OCEANUS
The Retreat of the Gualas Glacier
Like many mountain glaciers, the Gualas Glacier in the Patagonian region of Chile has retreated fast during the past century in the face of climate change. But not only for the reason you’d first suspect. The glacier’s retreat—5.5 miles over the past 110 years and 1.7 miles in the past 25 years—is not just being driven by melting caused by warming air temperatures. Instead, less snow is falling atop the glacier to replenish the river…
The Glacial Chronicles
Graduate student Benjamin Linhoff spent several months in the summers of 2011 and 2012 studying a glacier at a remote camp on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Here are some excerpts from his blog describing life and work there. Leaving home—April 28, 2011 “Do I need a gun?” “No, polar bears are fairly rare in this part of Greenland.” “Fairly rare?” Dr. Jemma Wadham, one of our expedition leaders, laughed and told me not to worry….
Storms, Floods, and Droughts
The source of the rain that filled your town reservoir, or flooded your nearby river, or never arrived to water your crops, is most likely the ocean. The ocean contains 96 percent of the free water on Earth, and it acts like a massive water pump. It is powered by heat evaporating water into water vapor. The atmosphere transports it far and wide, until it condenses into rain or snow and completes the cycle by…
New Weather-Shifting Climate Cycle Revealed
Scientists have uncovered evidence for another natural cycle that, like El Niño and La Niña, shifts Pacific Ocean winds and currents and rearranges rainfall and weather patterns around the globe. The newly detected cycle recurs every 100 years, less frequently than the two-to-seven year El Niño-Southern Oscillation. But its existence, if confirmed, offers another fundamental cog to understand the ocean-atmosphere machinery that regulates worldwide rain, droughts, wildfires, floods, landslides, fisheries, and storms. The new cycle,…
Follow the Carbon
“Carbon is the currency of life,” said David Griffith, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). “Where carbon is coming from, which organisms are using it, how they’re giving off carbon themselves—these things say a lot about how an ocean ecosystem works.” Scientists have had a hard time understanding how the Arctic Ocean’s ecosystem works, stymied by the region’s ice cover and remoteness, said Griffith, an MIT/WHOI Joint Program graduate student. Now he…
Publications
IN THE NEWS - RESEARCH HIGLIGHTS
Study offers first definitive proof that Gulf Stream has weakened
“New research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution offers the first conclusive evidence that the Gulf Stream has weakened. The powerful ocean current off the East Coast influences regional weather, climate and fisheries, and the finding could have significant implications both for New England and the global climate.”
What Happens to Marine Life When There Isn’t Enough Oxygen?
In September of 2017, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral scholar Maggie Johnson was conducting an experiment with a colleague in Bocas del Toro off the…
Maine’s having a lobster boom. A bust may be coming.
The waters off Maine’s coast are warming, and no one knows what that’s going to mean for the state’s half-billion-dollar-a-year lobster industry—the largest single-species fishery in North America. Some fear that continued warming could cause the lobster population to collapse. To understand what’s happening to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Maine, says Glen Gawarkiewicz, an oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, you have to look beyond it—see how it’s affected by the atmosphere, ocean currents, and rivers that flow into it.