School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology
Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa

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SOEST in the News

Photo of sediment trap HOT news: Pacific carbon pump speeds up in summer

Using 13 years of Hawai‘i Ocean Time-series (HOT) data from Station ALOHA (about 100 miles north of O‘ahu), an international team of scientists led by David Karl, professor of Oceanography and director of C-MORE, has documented a regular, significant, and unexpected increase in the amount of particulate matter exported to the deep sea in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The findings were published in the 07 February 2012 issue of PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Oceanography assistant professor Matthew Church is a co-author.

Read more about it at UH News, which includes a profile of Dr Karl. Image courtesy of Adriana Harlan and Susan Curless / SOEST.

Photo of wooden block Tracking the great Japan tsunami debris field

In order to better understand the flow of marine debris from the Japan tsunami last year, a team of researchers including Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner of IPRC is using a combination of high and low technology tracking devices. They have deposited a series of buoys, which report their position by satellite, and hundreds of simple wooden blocks near the leading edge of the debris field. The blocks are imprinted with an email address and phone number so beachcombers, boaters, and anyone else who finds one can report when and where they located it.

Read more about it at Raising Islands, and download the IPRC press release (PDF). Image courtesy of IPRC.

photo of C-MORE Hale Ocean acidity worsening, study finds

International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) postdoctoral fellow Tobias Friedrich is lead author of a paper in the online issue of Nature Climate Change examining the effects of man-made CO2 emissions on ocean water acidity (as acidity increases, the rates animals such as coral and shrimp make the calcium carbonate they use in their skeletons and shells decreases). In some regions, acidity levels appear to have risen faster in the last 200 years than in the previous 21,000 years. “Our results suggest that severe reductions are likely to occur in coral reef diversity, structural complexity and resilience by the middle of this century,” says co-author Axel Timmermann, a professor in the department of Oceanography.

Read more about it in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, The Daily Mail, Green House, Hawaii Reporter, and EurekaAlert!. An animation showing changes in surface saturation levels of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate) between 1800 and 2100 is available on YouTube. Image courtesy Dwayne Meadows, NOAA..

Please visit SOEST in the News: 2011 for archived news articles, with links to previous years.

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