Friday, June 30, 2006

Jellyfish-Like Creatures May Play Major Role in Fate of Carbon Dioxide in the Ocean

One swarm covered 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles) of the sea surface. The scientists estimated that the swarm consumed up to 74 percent of microscopic carbon-containing plants from the surface water per day, and their sinking fecal pellets transported up to 4,000 tons of carbon a day to deep water.

(Via Science Blog.)


Monster waves have been on the rise

Call anything rogue or monster and it immediately assumes a thrilling unreality found in science-fiction and horror tales. And yet, as we roll into summer and another hurricane season, the talk of rogue and monster ocean waves has been gaining, with scientific researchers in England and Germany recently publishing evidence that these waves might be much larger and more frequent than previously thought.

(Via The Anomalist.)

1 comments:

Ken said...

I very much suspect that these waves are not increasing in frequency; scientifically acceptable observation is increasing. In 24 years asea, I have witnessed some VERY large waves; however, my witnessing and guesstimations would not be acceptable data input, and thus, for science, these waves may as well have never existed.

There are some 130,000 ocean going freighters on Earth, right now. The largest number, by far, in all of history. This alone can account for the increased obeservation, by sheer force of observational numbers. Add to that the newly acquired abilities in wave measurement, and this so-called increase is not in the least surprising.

The waves have always been there: people just did not believe the sailors and fishermen, though we always knew that we were right.

About twenty years ago, an oceanographer at the University of Washington, Seattle, worked out the maximum possible height of a wave in the Gulf of Alaska: 198 feet. Such large waves can only exist for a few moments, as they are usually a combination of several wave trains which "get in synch" for a short while.

Otherwise, "normal" giant waves can be the result of far-distant storms, travel thousands of miles, then get "in synch" with other waves, become altered by bottom or coastline configurations, or otherwise have their wave length shortened, and their height therefore increased.

There is no particular reason to think these waves to be increasing in frequency. There are just a great deal more ships at sea to encounter them.

As for global warming, which IS occurring: it's as warm now as it was 400, 2,000, 5,000 years ago. How many factories and SUVs in 1600? 3,000 BC? Although humans almost certainly affect the climate, the proveable fact is that Earth's climate is not stable, and never has been.