Greenland’s fastest-melting glacier has stalled. But that’s bad news.

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Like a snake slithering back into its den, Greenland’s lengthy Jakobshavn glacier has retreated over 25 miles since the 19th century. And for the last two decades, this warming river of ice has purged more ice into to sea than any other Greenland glacier. 

But since 2016 — and after 20 years of unprecedented melting in Greenland — Jakobshavn’s rapid retreat has slowed down considerably and the glacier has even grown bigger. This might appear to be a rare dose of good news for the Arctic — a place that’s heated up over twice as much as the rest of the planet. 

But no.

Instead, a team researchers led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered that Jakobshavn’s stagnated melt is only a temporary blip brought on by cooler ocean currents. Though worryingly, the recent slowing also carries ominous news for the thawing landmass. The research, published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, reveals that the Jakobshavn glacier — whose ice reaches some 2,600 feet under the sea — is extremely sensitive to changes in ocean temperature. That’s a big problem because the dynamic ocean currents off western Greenland will naturally warm up again — on top of the reality that Earth’s absorbent seas soak up Read more…

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The ocean keeps gulping up a colossal amount of CO2 from the air, but will it last?

The ocean has proved to be an exceptionally selfless and dependable planetary companion. 
With no benefit to itself, Earth’s vast sea has gulped up around 30 percent of the carbon dioxide humans emitted into Earth’s atmosphere over the last cent…

View More The ocean keeps gulping up a colossal amount of CO2 from the air, but will it last?

Some icebergs are a glorious emerald green. Why?

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While traversing the seas off of eastern Antarctica in 1988, glaciologist Stephen Warren came upon green icebergs floating in the ocean. “We never expected to see green icebergs,” said Warren, noting that a deep blue hue — not emerald green — is commonly observed in these chunks of ice.

Over three decades later, Warren and a team of researchers have put forward an explanation for these rarely seen icebergs’ green hue. Their hypothesis, published Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, argues that tiny iron-rich rocky particles, similar to flour or dust, are the culprits. Specifically, this finely ground-up rock, aptly named “glacial flour,” gets trapped in the ice on the bottom of ice shelves — the ends of glaciers that float over the ocean — ultimately lending to the ice’s deep green appearance. When the icebergs eventually snap off, the fresh bergs carry the verdant hue. Read more…

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NASA dropped a space exploration robot into Cape Cod’s waters to reach the darkest unknowns

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When the Orpheus drone emerged from the waters off of Cape Cod in September 2018, deep sea biologist Tim Shank felt relieved. Four and a half years earlier, Shank, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), had sent a state-of-the-art exploration craft to crushing ocean depths — but the vehicle never returned.  

Only shattered pieces of plastic drifted back up to the surface world.

This time, the new exploration robot Orpheus passed its first test: The machine dove alone into the darkened sea for an hour, without any human control. Critically, the drone came back. Enthusiastic about Orpheus’ return, Shank said he fired off an email to his ocean exploration colleague, the filmmaker and deep sea explorer James Cameron. Read more…

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Why we need an underwater space race

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As midnight neared, we bobbed around in the black Caribbean Sea aboard a rubber dinghy. There were five of us out there, peering down into the undulating, forever darkness. We scoured the water for signs of a telltale light, coming from below.

A yellow submarine — the same one that seven years previous captured the first deep sea footage of a giant squid — was expected to return to the surface after spending five hours in the ocean depths off of Eluethera, a snake-shaped island in The Bahamas.

“There!” yelled a crewmember, pointing 50 feet off the dinghy. And there the water began to glow, an emerald radiance amid the black sea. The shine grew brighter and brighter until the submersible’s bubble-like capsule, holding three humans, popped out of the water. On cue, a crewmember balanced on the edge of the dinghy, lunged into the water and swam over to the exploration craft, preparing to hook it to a looming 184-foot vessel called the Alucia, which would soon hoist the yellow submarine from the sea, and end the night’s mission. Read more…

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Mesmerizing video shows what would happen if an asteroid crashed into Earth’s oceans

In films like Armageddon, Hollywood has valiantly tried (and failed) to take on the question of what would happen if a comet or asteroid plunged into the oceans on Earth, but what has scientific research actually determined it may look like?
America’…

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Norway wants to clean up our oceans. Here’s how it could work.

Earlier this year, Norway’s minister of international development visited Ghana.
Minister Nikolai Astrup had a simple request: He wanted to spend some time with his team collecting trash from beaches in the developing nation. 
His team assured h…

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Fish are friends, not food: Meet the world’s first known omnivorous shark

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It’s not exactly as vegetarian as Finding Nemo‘s Bruce, but this grass-eating shark could come close to taking the “fish are friends, not food” pledge.

Researchers claim they’ve identified the world’s first known omnivorous shark, which eats both underwater animals and plants. 

In a new study published by researchers at the University of California-Irvine and Florida International University, the bonnethead shark, which dwells in seagrass meadows off the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts, was found to be not solely carnivorous, as previously thought — it’s been sighted having a good nom on that seagrass on multiple occasions. Read more…

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