New study finds nighttime peaks in bacterial activity and carbon cycling in the ocean

Scientists at ASU BIOS turn their attention to a threat we cannot see: nanoplastics

Warmer, saltier, more acidic oceans threaten human, environmental health

Located southeast of Bermuda, Hydrostation ‘S’—a set of unmarked geographic coordinates (32 degrees 10 minutes North, 64 degrees 30 minutes West)—has yielded measurements of temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity and other parameters every two weeks for seven decades.

A diverse and abundant group of single-celled marine organisms, Rhizaria are known to affect carbon and other chemical cycles of the world’s oceans, but specifics are lacking. Research has been hampered by difficulties sampling, culturing and preserving many types of this protist super-group, and they have been underrepresented in models of global geochemical cycling as a result. Researchers and partners from two U.S. universities are seeking to change that narrative through a new three-year National Science Foundation-funded study.

Typically associated with the study of Earth’s upper atmosphere and beyond, satellites deployed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also augment our understanding of Earth’s ecosystems, including critical information about the ocean such as locations of algal blooms and levels of marine photosynthesis.

Oceans are constantly changing. These changes don’t only affect marine life but also have wide-reaching consequences for land dwellers. To document them, monitoring stations in the North Atlantic Ocean have been active for decades. Now, researchers have reported on the latest changes, showing that compared to 40 years ago, the ocean near the island of Bermuda is warmer, saltier, more acidic, and has lost oxygen. Long-term monitoring can provide information about existential challenges societies will face in the near future, the researchers said.

Read more at MaritimeProfessional.com “Born out of Dr. Rick Spinrad’s challenge to build a robot that can cross the Atlantic, these long-endurance oceanic scale basin crossings with little yellow submarines are becoming more and more routine,” said Clayton Jones, Senior Director of Technology Teledyne Webb Research. “Along the way, we continue to entrain international and educational outreach and better our global ocean predictive skills – a testament to the foresight of Dr. Henry Stommel and Douglas Webb who were instrumental in bringing undersea gliders to life.”

We’re familiar with how climate change is impacting the ocean’s biology, from bleaching events that cause coral die-offs to algae blooms that choke coastal marine ecosystems, but it’s becoming clear that a warming planet is also impacting the physics of ocean circulation.

New research published in Nature has revealed the importance of mineral forms of iron in regulating the cycling of this bio-essential nutrient in the ocean.