Wildfires in Indonesia this year, including this one next to a housing complex in Kubu Raya, might been intensified by the strong El Niño. Credit: DITO/AFP via Getty For Julia Cole, a palaeoclimatologist who uses corals to study Earth’s past climate, the powerful El Niño event now gaining strength in the Pacific Ocean comes as
Researchers are racing to determine the impact of rising sea surface temperatures on fragile marine ecosystems.Credit: Armando Babani/Getty The world’s oceans are on the brink of setting an all-time heat record, reaching temperatures that could roil marine ecosystems and sap the ocean’s ability to take up carbon dioxide from the air. “It just spells trouble
The El Niño weather pattern that is strengthening in the Pacific Ocean is on track to be the largest in at least 150 years, researchers said today during a press conference. If the monstrous forecasts they presented come true, the heat surge that El Niño will unleash from the ocean, combined with warming due to
The ocean floor has been mapped in much less detail than the surface of Mars.Credit: US Geological Survey/Scientific Photo Library The depths of the ocean are among the final frontiers of scientific exploration. Scientists have visually studied less than 0.001% of the seafloor, but oceanography is essential to understanding the climate, ecosystems, and processes deep
When tectonic plates move away from each other, lava can spill onto the sea floor along mid-ocean ridges.Credit: Doug Perrine/Nature Picture Library/SPL Geophysicists have captured, for the first time, the ocean floor in the act of separating at one of its seams. Using a set of more than 20 measuring stations placed in a 100-kilometer-long
