Highlights Archive

The ocean plays a key role in mitigating climate change by absorbing about 25 percent of the carbon dioxide gas (CO2) released into the atmosphere each year by human activities. However, this comes at a cost to ocean health because the uptake of this...

Microscopic organisms in the surface ocean, called phytoplankton, use photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds like carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Only a small fraction of this organic matter produced by phytoplankton is...

The 31st annual State of the Climate report confirmed that several markers such as sea level, ocean heat content, and permafrost in 2020 once again broke records set just one year prior. 2020 was also among the three warmest years in records dating...

A recent study published in Frontiers in Marine Science identified navigational challenges and opportunities for Arctic study using saildrones. Researchers from NOAA and other affiliates were among those carrying out the mission, where they took five...

The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the leading intraseasonal (20–100 days) variability in the tropics. It affects many weather-climate phenomena globally. Tremendous progress has been made in observing, describing, simulating, understanding, and...

The Washington/Oregon shelf, embedded in the Northern California Current System, is a productive habitat with important commercial fisheries. One of the most valuable species is Dungeness crab, which resides on the subsurface shelf and is sensitive...

Ocean warming absorbs about 9/10th of the excess energy that is entering Earth’s climate system because of a build-up of man-made greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. That warming causes ocean expansion, contributing to sea level rise. Knowing how...

The magnitude 7.0 Haiti earthquake of 2010 ruptured a complex fault network including both strike-slip faults (where two blocks slide past one another) and reverse faults (in which the upper block, above the fault plane, moves up and over the lower...

With annual revenues up to $220 million, the Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) is one of the most valuable commercial fisheries on the US West Coast. Yet, rapid intensification of ocean acidification (OA) along the US West Coast is reducing...

The sei whale is a large baleen whale, in the same genus as the blue whale, found in most of the world's oceans outside the Arctic. From 2009 to 2014, we searched acoustically for sei whales off the northeast coast of Greenland on the edge of the...

Wave-breaking at the ocean surface transports pockets of air from the atmosphere into the upper few meters of the ocean. This air forms bubbles and as these bubbles rise to the ocean surface they pick up organic compounds associated with ocean...

A new study published in the journal Nature (Roxy et al., 2019) shows that warming of the Indo-Pacific Ocean is altering rainfall patterns across the globe, contributing to declines in rainfall along the U.S. West Coast and parts of the East Coast...

OceanObs’19 was held in Honolulu, Hawaii, in September 2019. The conference presented a unique forum to share new ideas and concepts in marine data management and to emphasize the opportunities presented by a rapidly changing technology landscape...

Fluids in the Earth’s crust are heated by magma rising to the seafloor where tectonic plates separate or collide. These discharging fluids cool hot rock, construct mineral deposits, nurture biological communities, alter deep-sea mixing and...

With the ability to transit thousands of kilometers while making surface observations similar to a moored buoy, the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) Saildrone, manufactured and piloted by Saildrone, Inc., could contribute in important ways to the...

About half of carbon emissions are currently absorbed by natural processes taking place on land and in the ocean. But not all regions of the Earth’s surface act as a sink for emitted CO₂. The tropical Pacific Ocean stands out as a significant source...