Science Alert March 20, 2023 While surface marine heat waves can have dramatic impacts on marine ecosystems, extreme warming along the seafloor can also have significant biological outcomes. A team of researchers in the US (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, University of Colorado, National Center for Atmospheric Research) has developed a new model which shows that marine heatwaves can unfold deep underwater, too. The analysis focused on the west and east coasts of North America, using data spanning three decades, from 1993 to 2019, to produce simulations with a resolution of 8 kilometers or about 5 miles, fine enough to […]
Tag Archives: Ocean warming
Warming oceans will significantly alter how sound travels underwater
Phys.org March 24, 2022 A considerable fraction of marine life depends on sound, marine mammals exploit sound in all aspects of their life. Researchers in Italy studied the impact of climate change in sound propagation by computing the three-dimensional global field of underwater sound speed based on present conditions (2006–2016) and a future climate scenario identifying two “acoustic hotspots” where larger sound speed variations are expected. Their results indicated that the identified acoustic hotspots would present substantial climate-change-induced sound speed variations toward the end of the century, potentially affecting the vital activities of species in the areas. They provided evidence […]