Scripps Institution Of Oceanography

Indian origin climate researcher, partner say Copenhagen Accord objectives an uphill task

May 4, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

San Diego US, May 4 (ANI): Two climate change researchers have warned that the goals spelt out in the Copenhagen Accord will be a “Herculean” task.

Indian origin Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Yangyang Xu, climate researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego are advocates of fast-action climate change strategies.

“Without an integrated approach that combines CO2 emission reductions with reductions in other climate warmers and climate-neutral air-pollution laws, we are certain to pass the 2-degree C and likely reach a 4 degree C threshold during this century,” Ramanathan said.

“Fortunately there is still time to avert unmanageable climate changes, but we must act now,” he added.

Using a synthesis of National Science Foundation-funded research performed over the last 20 years, Ramanathan and Xu have outlined three steps that must be taken simultaneously to avoid the threshold, and stressed that carbon dioxide control alone is not sufficient.

Recommended steps include stabilizing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and fashioning warming-neutral pollution laws that will balance the removal of aerosols that have an atmospheric cooling effect with the removal of warming agents such as soot and ozone.

Finally, the authors advocate achieving reductions in methane, hydrofluorocarbons and other greenhouse gases that remain in the atmosphere for short periods of time.

According to the scientist, aggressive simultaneous pursuit of these strategies could reduce the probability of reaching the temperature threshold to less than 10 percent before the year 2050. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Air Pollution Laws, Carbon Dioxide Control, change researchers, change strategies, climate change, climate changes, Climate Researchers, Co2 Concentrations, greenhouse gases, Hydrofluorocarbons, indian origin, Institution Of Oceanography, national science foundation, Ramanathan, Recommended Steps, Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, Short Periods, Simultaneous Pursuit, Temperature Threshold, uc san diego

30-million-years-old worms munched on whale bones

April 21, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, April 21 (ANI): Palaeontologists have discovered the first fossil boreholes of the worm Osedax that consumes whale bones on the deep-sea floor.

The international team of scientists led by the paleontologist Steffen Kiel at the University of Kiel, Germany, concludes that ‘boneworms’ are at least 30 million years old.

Six years ago, Osedax was first described based on specimens living on a whale carcass in 2891 m depth off California. Since then, paleontologists have been searching for fossil evidence to pin down its geologic age.

Now, scientists have found 30-million-year-old whalebones with holes and excavations matching those of living Osedax in size and shape.

The evidence of the boreholes and cavities made by the living worms was provided by Greg Rouse (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), one of the original discoverers of Osedax.

To produce accurate images of the fossil boreholes, the bones were CT-scanned by the scientists. The fossil bones belong to ancestors of our modern baleen whales and their age was determined using so-called co-occurring index fossils.

“The age of our fossils coincides with the time when whales began to inhabit the open ocean,” said Steffen Kiel.

Only from the open ocean dead whales could sink to the deep-sea floor where they served as food for the boneworms.

“Food is extremely rare on the vast deep-sea floor and the concurrent appearance of these whales and Osedax shows that even hard whale bones were quickly utilized as food source,” said Steffen Kiel.

The ancient bones were found by the American fossil collector Jim Goedert.

The findings have been published in the current issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. (ANI)

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Scientists to map Chile earthquake site to capture fresh data

March 20, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, March 20 (ANI): A team of scientists are all set to undertake an expedition to explore the rupture site of the 8.8-magnitude Chilean earthquake, which is one of largest quakes in recorded history.

The scientists are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at the University of California at San Diego.

The scientists hope to capitalize on a unique scientific opportunity to capture fresh data from the event.

They will study changes in the seafloor that resulted from movements along faults and submarine landslides.

The “rapid response” expedition, called the Survey of Earthquake And Rupture Offshore Chile, will take place aboard the research vessel Melville.

The Melville was conducting research off Chile when the earthquake struck.

“This rapid response cruise is a rare opportunity to better understand the processes that affect the generation and size of tsunamis,” said Julie Morris, NSF division director for Ocean Sciences.

“Seafloor evidence of the quake will contribute to understanding similar earthquake regions worldwide,” she added.

An important aspect of the rapid response mission involves swath multibeam sonar mapping of the seafloor to produce detailed topographic maps.

“Data from mapping the earthquake rupture zone will be made public soon after the research cruise ends,” Morris said.

The new data will be compared with pre-quake data taken by scientists at Germany”s Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR).

Several years ago, IFM-GEOMAR researchers conducted a detailed multibeam mapping survey off Chile.

Their data will be valuable for comparisons with the new survey to expose changes from the earthquake rupture, according to researchers.

“We’d like to know if the genesis of the resulting tsunami was caused by direct uplift of the seabed along a fault, or by slumping from shaking of sediment-covered slopes,” said Dave Chadwell, an SIO geophysicist and chief scientist of the expedition.

“We will look for disturbances in the seafloor, including changes in reflectivity and possibly shape, by comparing previous data with the new (rapid response) data,” he added.

Accoridng to Bruce Appelgate, associate director for Ship Operations and Marine Technical Support at SIO, “The earthquake was a tragedy for the people of Chile, but we hope this opportunity enables important new discoveries that can help us plan for future events.” (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Chile Earthquake, Cruise Ends, earthquake regions, Earthquake Rupture, Institution Of Oceanography, Julie Morris, Leibniz Institute, national science foundation, Nsf Division, Quake Data, Research Cruise, research vessel, Response Cruise, Rupture Zone, Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, seafloor, sonar mapping, Submarine Landslides, topographic maps, university of california at san diego

Scientists identify ‘tipping points’ at which sudden shifts to new conditions occur

September 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 3 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have identified ‘tipping points’ at which sudden shifts to new conditions occur in the world.

The research was done by Martin Scheffer of Wageningen University in The Netherlands and co-authors, including William Brock and Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

They found that abrupt changes in ocean circulation and Earth’s climate, shifts in wildlife populations and ecosystems, the global finance market and its system-wide crashes, and asthma attacks and epileptic seizures share generic early-warning signals that indicate a critical threshold of change dead ahead.

The team found that similar symptoms occur in many systems as they approach a critical state of transition.

“It’s increasingly clear that many complex systems have critical thresholds – ‘tipping points’ – at which these systems shift abruptly from one state to another,” according to the scientists.

Especially relevant, they discovered, is that “catastrophic bifurcations,” a diverging of the ways, propel a system toward a new state once a certain threshold is exceeded.

A system follows a trail for so long, then often comes to a switchpoint at which it will strike out in a completely new direction.

That system may be as tiny as the alveoli in human lungs or as large as global climate.

“These are compelling insights into the transitions in human and natural systems,” said Henry Gholz, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology, which supported the research along with NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.

“The information comes at a critical time – a time when Earth’s and, our fragility, have been highlighted by global financial collapses, debates over health care reform, and concern about rapid change in climate and ecological systems,” he added.

It all comes down to what scientists call “squealing,” or “variance amplification near critical points,” when a system moves back and forth between two states.

“A system may shift permanently to an altered state if an underlying slow change in conditions persists, moving it to a new situation,” said Carpenter.

According to scientists, “In systems in which we can observe transitions repeatedly, such as lakes, ranges or fields, and such as human physiology, we may discover where the thresholds are.”

“If we have reason to suspect the possibility of a critical transition, early-warning signals may be a significant step forward in judging whether the probability of an event is increasing,” they added. (ANI)

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Antarctica’s plumbing system more dynamic than previously believed

September 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 2 (ANI): Scientists, using space-based lasers on a NASA satellite have created the most comprehensive inventory of lakes that actively drain or fill under Antarctica’s ice, which has revealed a continental plumbing system that is more dynamic than previously thought.

“Even though Antarctica’s ice sheet looks static, the more we watch it, the more we see there is activity going on there all the time,” said Benjamin Smith of the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the study.

Unlike most lakes, Antarctic lakes are under pressure from the ice above. That pressure can push melt water from place to place like water in a squeezed balloon.

The water moves under the ice in a broad, thin layer, but also through a linked cavity system. This flow can resupply other lakes near and far.

Understanding this plumbing is important, as it can lubricate glacier flow and send the ice speeding toward the ocean, where it can melt and contribute to sea level change.

But figuring out what’s happening beneath miles of ice is a challenge.

Researchers led by Smith analyzed 4.5 years of ice elevation data from NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation satellite (ICESat) to create the most complete inventory to date of changes in the Antarctic plumbing system.

The team has mapped the location of 124 active lakes, estimated how fast they drain or fill, and described the implications for lake and ice-sheet dynamics.

Smith, Helen Fricker, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and colleagues extended their elevation analysis to cover most of the Antarctic continent and 4.5 years of data from ICESat’s Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS).

By observing how ice sheet elevation changed between the two or three times the satellite flew over a section every year, researchers could determine which lakes were active.

They also used the elevation changes and the properties of water and ice to estimate the volume change.

Only a few of the more than 200 previously identified lakes were confirmed active, implying that lakes in East Antarctica’s high-density “Lakes District” are mostly inactive and do not contribute much to ice sheet changes.

Most of the 124 newly observed active lakes turned up in coastal areas, at the head of large drainage systems, which have the largest potential to contribute to sea level change.

According to Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, “The survey shows that most active subglacial lakes are located where the ice is moving fast, which implies a relationship.” (ANI)

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Decoded structure of sea compound yielding potential new ways to fight diseases

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 29 (ANI): A team of scientists in the U.S. have deciphered the highly unusual molecular structure of a natural sea compound, which is shedding new light on the function of mammalian nerve cells.

The team of collaborators from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego (UC San Diego) and Creighton University have found that cyanobacteria, tiny photosynthetic sea organisms, produce a compound with a structure previously unseen in biomedicine.

The researchers say that the compound, which they have dubbed hoiamide A, offers a novel template for drug development.

“We have seen some of hoiamide A’s features in other molecules, but separately. We believe this new template may be important because it’s showing different mechanisms of action-different ways to interact with neurons, possibly with a good therapeutic effect for such diseases as epilepsy, hypoxia-ischemia and several neurodegenerative disorders,” said Alban Pereira, a postdoctoral researcher in Scripps’ CMBB.

The researchers have also revealed that pharmacological tests have shown that Hoiamide A interacts with the same important therapeutic target as analgesic, antiarrhythmic, antiepileptic, and neuroprotective drugs.

“Classically, what we know about the workings of the human nervous system has come largely from studies of different toxins on the function of model systems, such as in this case, the action of hoiamide A on nerve cells in petri dish cultures,” said principal co-investigators William Gerwick.

“The toxins serve as ‘molecular tools’ for manipulating cells at an extremely microscopic scale. Ultimately, by understanding how neurons work at this detailed level, and having a set of tools such as hoiamide A, we can envision the development of new, more effective treatments for such diverse conditions as epilepsy, pain control and memory and cognition enhancement.

The natural world still has many valuable molecules left for us to discover and hopefully develop into new classes of medicines,” he added.

A research article describing the study has been published in the journal Chemistry and Biology. (ANI)

Filed Under: Health News Tagged With: antiepileptic, california san diego, co investigators, creighton university, how neurons work, human nervous system, hypoxia ischemia, Institution Of Oceanography, mammalian nerve cells, microscopic scale, molecular tools, natural sea, neuroprotective drugs, postdoctoral researcher, principal co, Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, sea organisms, therapeutic target, uc san diego, university of california san diego

Scientists discover oceanic worms that throw ‘green bombs’ on predators

August 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 21 (ANI): Scientists have discovered a mysterious group of oceanic worms that can throw ‘bombs’ which burst into brilliant green light – probably a defensive mechanism against potential predators.

The unique group of worms was discovered by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC (University of California) San Diego.

They were found by the scientists using remotely operated vehicles at depths between 1,800 and 3,700 meters (5,900 and 12,140 feet).

Nicknamed “green bombers”, the worms can release body parts that produce a brilliant green bioluminescent display.

They have been given the scientific name Swima bombiviridis, referring to their swimming ability and the green bombs.

Largely transparent except for the gut area, the worms propel themselves with fans of long bristles that form swimming paddles.

“The depths between 1,000 and 4,000 meters (3,280 and 13,120 feet) form the biggest habitat on Earth and also the least explored,” said Scripps Professor Greg Rouse, a coauthor of the paper and curator of Scripps Benthic Invertebrate Collection.

“With fairly limited time on submersible vehicles, mainly off California, we’ve picked up seven new species. It goes to show that we have much more exploration ahead and who knows what else we’ll discover?” he added.

Each of the species features a variety of elaborate head appendages.

Five of them are equipped with luminescent structures, the “bombs,” that are fluid-filled spheres that suddenly burst into light when released by the animal, glowing intensely for several seconds before slowly fading.

Due to the bright lights of the submersible, scientists were not able to witness bomb-casting in the worm’s natural habitat, but rather on ships after the animals were captured.

While the scientists speculate that the bombs are used as a defensive mechanism against potential predators, more studies are needed to fully understand the process.

According to Rouse, the green bombers in the newly discovered clade, (a common ancestor and all its descendant organisms), are fascinating from an evolutionary standpoint.

Looking closely at their relatives that live on the seafloor, it appears the bombs were once gills that evolutionarily transformed over time.

“The relatives have gills that appear to be in exactly the same places as the bombs,” said Rouse. “The gills can fall off very easily; so there’s a similarity of being detachable, but for some reason, the gills have transformed to become these glowing little detachable spheres,” he added. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: appendages, benthic invertebrate, body parts, bombers, bright lights, bristles, california san diego, coauthor, defensive mechanism, Institution Of Oceanography, invertebrate collection, mysterious group, natural habitat, predators, professor greg, Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, spheres, submersible vehicles, swimming paddles, university of california san diego

Sources of Earth’s “hum” pinpointed

August 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 9 (ANI): A new research has found that the Pacific coasts of North America and Central America are important sources of the Earth’s low-frequency vibration, or “hum”.

Previous studies had found that this hum is excited by infragravity waves, a type of ocean wave that originates in shallow water along coasts, but it was uncertain whether hum is generated primarily by infragravity waves in the deep ocean or along coastlines.

To pinpoint the sources of Earth’s hum, Peter D. Bromirski and Peter Gerstoft from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, US, correlated hum intensity data from the EarthScope US Array transportable array with ocean wave height measurements and model simulations.

Their results show that the hum is generated primarily along coasts, with no significant hum generation in the deep ocean.

In particular, they found that the Pacific coasts of North America and Central America are important sources of the hum, and the west coast of Europe is a strong secondary source region, while no significant hum was detected from the Southern Hemisphere during the study period, which is November 2006 to June 2007.

The study is the first to identify these specific source regions for Earth’s hum. (ANI)

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Panama may hold cures to cancer, malaria and dengue fever

July 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 11 (ANI): A team of scientists is exploring the length and breadth of Panama in search of exotic molecules that could one day lead to new treatments for human diseases like cancer, malaria and dengue fever.

The team is being led by William Gerwick from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC (University of California) San Diego.

It was at the island of Coiba off Panama’s Pacific coast, where in June 2004, Kerry McPhail, then a postdoctoral scientist working with Gerwick, discovered a cyanobacterium in shallow water, a primitive photosynthetic organism with features unlike any previously encountered by scientists.

Laboratory analysis and testing revealed that the organism naturally produces a potent cancer-fighting compound.

“To the full extent that we can tell, the compound is working by a novel mechanism to kill cancer cells,” said Gerwick, a scientist with the Scripps Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine and the UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

“It has a very unusual molecular structure unlike any we’ve seen before,” he added.

Panama’s location as a bridge between North and South America and a natural thoroughfare for a diverse assortment of migratory land and water species gives it a unique appeal to scientists.

“Despite the fact that we all know Panama because of its famous canal, I have been struck by how remote and primitive and relatively unspoiled large stretches of Panama remain today,” said Gerwick.

Lena Gerwick, a biologist and fellow Scripps researcher, believes that in addition to cancer, the Panamanian environment could be holding biomedically promising sources for treating malaria and tropical diseases such as Chagas’ disease, leishmaniasis, and dengue fever.

Such diseases have been labeled as “neglected” afflictions because they impact millions of people, but have been largely forgotten by the developed world and pharmaceutical companies due to the anticipation of poor returns, and thus few resources are made available to find new treatments for these diseases.

“If you have a lot of diverse organisms, as you find in the tropics, they produce a large diversity of natural products,” said Lena Gerwick.

“There is high competition for every species to carve out its own niche and survive. With that you find a lot of compounds used in defense and other diverse activities. Within this biodiversity might be the next cure for malaria or the next cure for tuberculosis, so there is a great need to conserve it,” she added. (ANI)

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Sulfate particles enhance climate warming properties of atmospheric soot

June 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 30 (ANI): A new study has found that particles of sulfate, thought to be holding climate change in check by reflecting sunlight, instead enhances warming when combined with airborne soot.

Recent atmospheric models have ranked soot, also called black carbon, second only to carbon dioxide in potential for atmospheric warming.

But particles, or aerosols, such as soot mix with other chemicals in the atmosphere, complicating estimates of their role in changing climate.

“Until now, scientists have had to assume how soot is mixed with other chemical species in individual particles and estimate how that ultimately impacts their warming potential,” said Kimberly Prather, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

“Our measurements show that soot is most commonly mixed with other chemicals such as sulfate and this mixing happens very quickly in the atmosphere. These are the first direct measurements of the optical properties of atmospheric soot and allow us to better understand the role of soot in climate change,” she added.

For the study, Prather and Ryan Moffet, a former graduate student at UC San Diego who is now at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, measured atmospheric aerosols over Riverside, California and Mexico City.

Using an instrument that measures the size, chemical composition and optical properties of aerosols in real time, they showed that jagged bits of fresh soot quickly become coated with a spherical shell of other chemicals, particularly sulfate, nitrate, and organic carbon, through light-driven chemical reactions.

Within several hours of sunrise, most of the atmospheric carbon they measured had been altered in this way.

Particles of sulfate or nitrate alone reflect light, and some have proposed pumping sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere to slow climate change.

But, these chemicals play a different role when they mix with soot.

“The coating acts like a lens and focuses the light into the center of the particle, enhancing warming,” Prather said.

“Many people think sulfate aerosols are a good thing because they are highly reflective and cool our planet,” he said.

“However, we are seeing that sulfate is commonly mixed with soot in the same particles, which means in some regions sulfate could lead to more warming as opposed to more cooling as one would expect for a pure sulfate aerosol,” he added.

Their measurements showed that in the atmosphere the lens-like shell of sulfate and nitrate enhances absorption of light by coated soot particles 1.6 times over pure soot particles. (ANI)

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High CO2 levels lead to abnormally large fish ear bones

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 26 (ANI): Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the ocean can cause abnormally large growth in the otoliths, or ear bones, of fish, say researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Considered a fundamental bodily structure in fish, otoliths serve a vital function in fish by helping them sense orientation and acceleration.

In the study, the researchers have described experiments in which fish that were exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide experienced abnormally large growth in their otoliths.

The researchers had hypothesized that otoliths in young white seabass growing in waters with elevated carbon dioxide would grow more slowly than a comparable group growing in seawater with normal CO2 levels.

But, to their surprise, they discovered the reverse and found “significantly larger” otoliths in fish developing in high-CO2 water.

Although the fish in high-CO2 water were not larger in overall size, it was only the otoliths that grew demonstrably bigger.

“At this point one doesn’t know what the effects are in terms of anything damaging to the behavior or the survival of the fish with larger otoliths. The assumption is that anything that departs significantly from normality is an abnormality and abnormalities at least have the potential for having deleterious effects,” said David Checkley, a Scripps Oceanography professor and lead author of the new study.

Now, the researchers are poised to determine whether the otolith growth abnormality exists in fish other than white seabass; to locate the physical mechanism that causes the enhanced otolith growth; and to assess whether the larger otoliths have a functional effect on the survival and the behaviour of the fish.

“Number three is the big one. If fish can do just fine or better with larger otoliths then there’s no great concern. But fish have evolved to have their bodies the way they are. The assumption is that if you tweak them in a certain way it’s going to change the dynamics of how the otolith helps the fish stay upright, navigate and survive,” said Checkley.

The study has been published in the journal Science. (ANI)

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Whales caught ‘thieving’ on camera

May 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 23 (IANS) Sperm whales have been caught on camera stealing cod off fishing gear.

The unique video shot on CCTV cameras shows sperm whales’ ability to steal black cod off longlines of deep-sea fishing gear that features a main fishing line draped across the ocean and fastened with shorter lines bearing baited hooks.

Frustrated black cod fishermen began to realise that their longline fishing boats were attracting groups of whales, which typically forage alone, to their longlines, somehow alerting the animals like a dinner bell.

To help fishermen and scientists better understand this behaviour, Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers deployed acoustic recorders on longlines in 2004 off Sitka, Alaska, as part of the Southeast Alaska Sperm Whale Avoidance Project (SEASWAP).

The results helped identify the sounds that attract whales to the fishing vessels. Encouraged, researchers added video cameras to the fishing gear in 2006, which led to some unexpected results.

The resulting video, recorded using ambient light at 100 metres depth, not only successfully gave the fishermen a clear idea of how the thieving whales were stealing the fish.

They pluck the line at one end to jar the black cod free at the other end, somewhat like shaking apples from a tree-but it gave scientists a chance to match the animal’s acoustics with video depictions of its physical features.

Sperm whales typically dive to dark depths spanning 300 to 2,000 meters to catch prey, making it virtually impossible to capture such activity on video.

The fact that the animals produce foraging sounds at such shallow depths around fishing vessels is the main reason the Alaska footage is so unique.

The clicks emitted by the whales are produced more rapidly as they approach their targets of interest and are among the loudest and most intense sounds produced by any animal, according to Thode, associate scientist with Scripps Marine Physical Laboratory.

“The sounds can be louder than a firecracker,” said Thode. “But until this video recording was made, scientists had not been able to get a direct measurement of the size of the animal and the foraging sounds at the same time.”

The study was published in the May issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

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Now, you can hear global warming

May 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 22 (ANI): A new study has determined that it’s now possible to hear the rise of global warming, in the form of more larger and more intense storms, which are signs of climate change.

For decades, seismologists have been filtering out the sounds of massive, storm-driven ocean waves crashing into coastlines. The pesky noise was getting in the way of earthquake detection.

According to a report in National Geographic News, but now, some experts are electronically filtering out the quakes, and turning up the volume on the storm waves.

The noise of waves crashing ashore creates very specific vibrations, according to study leader Peter Bromirski of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Those vibrations indicate how severe storms at sea actually are.

Bromirski and others are still studying seismological data on storms from the 1930s to the present and are waiting to release the full analysis to the public.

“But a trend is already obvious,” he said. “There is a definite increase in severe storm events over the years that we are noticing at the recording stations,” he added.

The world stage is very well set for full-scale eavesdropping on open-ocean storm waves.

Seismic recording stations have been monitoring the vibrations of the Earth worldwide since the 1930s in roughly the same way.

That consistency may be reassuring to scientists.

For example, weather-satellite data have been used to identify evidence of a trend of intensifying storms, but some scientists say satellite tech, having changed so much over the decades, is problematic for tracking storms in the long term.

“The nice thing about these (quake) recording stations is that they are such stable devices that so consistently measure the vibrations produced by storm activity,” Bromirski said. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: climate change, Definite Increase, earthquake detection, Institution Of Oceanography, intense storms, Massive Storm, National Geographic News, nice thing, ocean storm, ocean waves, open ocean, quakes, Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, seismological data, severe storms, storm activity, storm events, storm waves, storms at sea, weather satellite data

Scientists move closer to “holy grail” of climate change science

May 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 18 (ANI): A team of atmospheric chemists has moved closer to the first-ever direct detections of biological particles within ice clouds, which is considered the “holy grail” of climate change science.

The team, led by Kimberly Prather and Kerri Pratt of the University of California at San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sampled water droplet and ice crystal residues at high speeds while flying through clouds in the skies over Wyoming, US.

Analysis of the ice crystals revealed that the particles that started their growth were made up almost entirely of either dust or biological material such as bacteria, fungal spores and plant material.

This study is the first to yield direct data on how airborne microorganisms work to influence cloud formation.

“If we understand the sources of the particles that nucleate clouds, and their relative abundance, we can determine their impact on climate,” said Pratt, lead author of the research paper.

The effects of tiny airborne particles called aerosols on cloud formation have been some of the most difficult aspects of weather and climate for scientists to understand.

In climate change science, which derives many of its projections from computer simulations of climate phenomena, the interactions between aerosols and clouds represent what scientists consider the greatest uncertainty in modeling predictions for the future.

“By sampling clouds in real time from an aircraft, these investigators were able to get information about ice particles in clouds at an unprecedented level of detail,” said Anne-Marie Schmoltner of NSF’s (National Science Foundation’s) Division of Atmospheric Sciences, which funded the research.

“By determining the chemical composition of the very cores of individual ice particles, they discovered that both mineral dust and, surprisingly, biological particles play a major role in the formation of clouds,” she added.

The Ice in Clouds Experiment – Layer Clouds (ICE-L) team mounted a mass spectrometer onto a C-130 aircraft operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, and made a series of flights through a type of cloud known as a wave cloud.

The researchers performed in-situ measurements of cloud ice crystal residues and found that half were mineral dust and about a third were made up of inorganic ions mixed with nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon, the signature elements of biological matter.

The team demonstrated that both dust and biological material indeed form the nuclei of these ice particles, something that previously could only be simulated in laboratory experiments.

“This has really been kind of a holy grail measurement for us,” said Prather. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: airborne microorganisms, atmospheric chemists, biological particles, chemical composition, climate change science, climate phenomena, Computer Simulations, Formation Of Clouds, fungal spores, holy grail, Institution Of Oceanography, kimberly prather, layer clouds, Mineral Dust, national science foundation, relative abundance, Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, Tiny Airborne Particles, university of california at san diego, water droplet, Weather And Climate

Wetlands likely source of methane from warming event 11,600 years ago

April 24, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 24 (ANI): A new research by an international team of scientists has determined that an expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago.

The international research team was led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC (University of California) San Diego.

The finding is expected to come as a relief to scientists and climate watchers concerned that huge accelerations of global warming might have been touched off by methane melts in the past and could happen again now as the planet warms.

By measuring the amount of carbon-14 isotopes in methane from air bubbles trapped in glacial ice, the researchers determined that the surge that took place nearly 12,000 years ago was more chemically consistent with an expansion of wetlands.

Wetland regions, which produce large amounts of methane from bacterial breakdown of organic matter, are known to have spread during warming trends throughout history.

“This is good news for global warming because it suggests that methane clathrates do not respond to warming by releasing large amounts of methane into the atmosphere,” said Vasilii Petrenko, a postdoctoral fellow at University of Colorado, Boulder, who led the analysis while a graduate student at Scripps.

The research team, overseen by Scripps geoscientist and study co-author Jeff Severinghaus, collected what may be the largest ice samples ever for a climate change study.

The researchers cut away 15 tons of ice from a site called Pakitsoq at the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet to collect the ancient air trapped within.

Methane exists in low concentrations in this air and only a trillionth of any given amount contains the carbon-14 isotope that the researchers needed to perform the analysis.

Levels of carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,730 years, were too high in the methane to have come from clathrates, the researchers concluded.

“This study is important because it confirms that wetlands and moisture availability change dramatically along with abrupt climate change,” said Severinghaus.

“This highlights in a general way the fact that the largest impacts of future climate change may be on water resources and drought, rather than temperature per se,” he added. (ANI)

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Exploding volcanoes make noise similar to jet engines

April 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 9 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have suggested that the large-amplitude signals from volcanic eruptions are similar to the noise produced by typical jet engines.

The research was done by scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC (University of California) San Diego.

The research team speeded up the recorded sounds from two volcanoes and uncovered a noise very similar to typical jet engines.

These new research findings provide scientists with a more useful probe of the inner workings of volcanic eruptions.

Infrasound is sound that is lower in frequency than 20 cycles per second, below the limit of human hearing.

The study, led by Robin Matoza, a graduate student at Scripps Oceanography, measured infrasonic sound from Mount St. Helens in Washington State and Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador, both of which are highly active volcanoes close to large population centers.

“We hypothesized that these very large natural volcanic jets were making very low frequency jet noise,” said Matoza, who conducts research in the Scripps Laboratory for Atmospheric Acoustics.

Using 100-meter aperture arrays of microbarometers, similar to weather barometers but sensitive to smaller changes in atmospheric pressure and low-frequency infrasonic microphones, the research team tested the hypothesis, revealing the physics of how the large-amplitude signals from eruptions are produced.

Jet noise is generated by the turbulent flow of air out of a jet engine.

Matoza and colleagues recorded these very large-amplitude infrasonic signals during the times when ash-laden gas was being ejected from the volcano.

The study concluded that these large-scale volcanic jets are producing sound in a similar way to smaller-scale man-made jets.

According to Michael Hedlin, director of Scripps’ Atmospheric Acoustics Lab and a co-author on the research paper, “We can draw on this area of research to speed up our own study of volcanoes for both basic research interests, to provide a deeper understanding of eruptions, and for practical purposes, to determine which eruptions are likely ash-free and therefore less of a threat and which are loaded with ash.”

Researchers also hope this new information can improve hazard mitigation and inform pilots and the aviation industry. (ANI)

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Scientists solve origin of ocean’s mysterious ‘green glow’

April 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 2 (ANI): Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC (University of California) San Diego have uncovered key clues about bioluminescent worms in the sea that produce a green glow and the biological mechanisms behind their light production.

Research conducted by Scripps marine biologists Dimitri Deheyn and Michael Latz reveals that marine fireworms use bioluminescence to attract suitors in an undersea mating ritual.

The report provides insights into the function of fireworm bioluminescence and moves scientists closer to identifying the molecular basis of the light.

“This is another step toward understanding the biology of the bioluminescence in fireworms, and it also brings us closer to isolating the protein that produces the light,” said Deheyn.

“If we understand how it is possible to keep light so stable for such a long time, it would provide opportunities to use that protein or reaction in biomedical, bioengineering and other fields-the same way other proteins have been used,” he added.

The fireworms used in the study (Odontosyllis phosphorea) are seafloor-dwelling animals that inhabit tropical and sub-tropical shallow coastal areas.

During summer reproductive events known as “swarming,” females secrete a luminous green mucus-which often draws the attention of human seafarers-before releasing gametes into the water.

The bright glow attracts male fireworms, which also release gametes into the bright green cloud.
The precisely timed bioluminescent displays have been tracked like clockwork in Southern California, the Caribbean and Japan, peaking one to two days before each quarter moon phase, 30 to 40 minutes after sunset and lasting approximately 20 to 30 minutes.

Deheyn and Latz collected hundreds of specimens from San Diego’s Mission Bay for their study, allowing them to not only examine live organisms but also produce the fireworms’ luminous mucus for the first time in an experimental setting.

The achievement provided a unique perspective and framework for examining the biology behind the worm’s bioluminescent system.

A central finding is that the fireworms’ bioluminescent light appears to play a role beyond attracting mates.

The researchers found that juveniles produce bioluminescence as flashes, leading to a determination that the light also may serve as a defensive mechanism, intended to distract predators.

Through experiments that included hot and cold testing and oxygen depletion studies, Deheyn and Latz found that the bioluminescence is active in temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Based on these tests, the researchers believe the chemical process responsible for the bioluminescence may involve a specific light-producing protein-also called a “photoprotein.”

Further identification and isolation will be pursued in future studies. (ANI)

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Termite killer looms as potent greenhouse gas

March 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 11 (ANI): A new study has indicated that fumigant pumped into tented houses to kill pests remains in atmosphere six to 10 times longer than previously thought, thus becoming a potent greenhouse gas.

The study was conducted by a research team led by Jens Muhle, an atmospheric chemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC (University of California) San Diego.

The team discovered that Sulfuryl fluoride (SO2F2), a gas commonly used to rid buildings of termites and other pests, is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere about 36 years, six to 10 times longer than previously thought.

The team found that the concentration of the gas rose at a rate of 4 to 6 percent per year between 1978 and 2007, to a global atmospheric abundance by the end of 2007 of about 1.5 parts per trillion.

Its actual emissions into the atmosphere over this period were about one third less than estimated from industrial production data.

“It’s extremely important to have independent verification of emissions,” said Muhle. “You can’t have regulation without verification, and you can’t have verification without measurements,” he added.

Muhle said that he started detecting an unknown compound in air samples taken in early 2004 at the Scripps pier with a newly developed measurement instrument.

He identified the compound as SO2F2 and concluded that the large fluctuations seen at the pier were likely related to the fumigation of local buildings.

The team expanded the analysis to air samples routinely collected around the world at stations of the NASA-funded Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) network and to old air samples archived in metal cylinders.

With the help of atmospheric computer models, the Scripps team and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) determined that the most important removal process of sulfuryl fluoride is dissolution into the ocean, where it is decomposed by chemical reactions.

NOAA researchers working with the Scripps team calculated that one kilogram of SO2F2 emitted into the atmosphere has a global warming potential approximately 4,800 times greater than one kilogram of carbon dioxide.

“Such fumigants are very important for controlling pests in the agricultural and building sectors,” said Ron Prinn, director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science. “But with methyl bromide being phased out, industry had to find alternatives, so sulfuryl fluoride has evolved to fill the role,” he added.

“Unfortunately, it turns out that sulfuryl fluoride is a greenhouse gas with a longer lifetime than previously assumed,” said Muhle. “This has to be taken into account before large amounts are emitted into the atmosphere,” he added. (ANI)

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