Oceans Feel The Heat From Human Climate Pollution
Oceans have absorbed the vast majority of the warming caused by burning fossil fuels and shielded societies from the full impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
But this crucial ally has developed alarming symptoms of stress -- heatwaves, loss of marine life, rising sea levels, falling oxygen levels and acidification caused by the uptake of excess carbon dioxide.
These effects risk not just the health of the ocean but the entire planet.
Heating Up
By absorbing more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, "oceans are warming faster and faster", said Angelique Melet, an oceanographer at the European Mercator Ocean monitor.
The UN's IPCC climate expert panel has said the rate of ocean warming -- and therefore its heat uptake -- has more than doubled since 1993.
Average sea surface temperatures reached new records in 2023 and 2024.
Despite a respite at the start of 2025, temperatures remain at historic highs, according to data from the Europe Union's Copernicus climate monitor.
The Mediterranean has set a new temperature record in each of the past three years and is one of the basins most affected, along with the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, said Thibault Guinaldo, of France's CEMS research centre.
Marine heatwaves have doubled in frequency, become longer lasting and more intense, and affect a wider area, the IPCC said in its special oceans report.
Warmer seas can make storms more violent, feeding them with heat and evaporated water.
The heating water can also be devastating for species, especially corals and seagrass beds, which are unable to migrate.
For corals, between 70 percent and 90 percent are expected to be lost this century if the world reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to pre-industrial levels.
Scientists expect that threshold -- the more ambitious goal of the Paris climate deal -- to be breached in the early 2030s or even before.
Relentless Rise
When a liquid or gas warms up, it expands and takes up more space.
In the case of the oceans, this thermal expansion combines with the slow but irreversible melting of the world's ice caps and mountain glaciers to lift the world's seas.
The pace at which global oceans are rising has doubled in three decades and if current trends continue it will double again by 2100 to about one centimetre per year, according to recent research.
Around 230 million people worldwide live less than a metre above sea level, vulnerable to increasing threats from floods and storms.
"Ocean warming, like sea-level rise, has become an inescapable process on the scale of our lives, but also over several centuries," said Ms Melet.
"But if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will reduce the rate and magnitude of the damage, and gain time for adaptation".
More Acidity, Less Oxygen
The ocean not only stores heat, it has also taken up 20 to 30 percent of all humans' carbon dioxide emissions since the 1980s, according to the IPCC, causing the waters to become more acidic.
Acidification weakens corals and makes it harder for shellfish and the skeletons of crustaceans and certain plankton to calcify.
"Another key indicator is oxygen concentration, which is obviously important for marine life," said Ms Melet.
Oxygen loss is due to a complex set of causes including those linked to warming waters.
Reduced Sea Ice
Combined Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover -- frozen ocean water that floats on the surface -- plunged to a record low in mid-February, more than a million square miles below the pre-2010 average.
This becomes a vicious circle, with less sea ice allowing more solar energy to reach and warm the water, leading to more ice melting.
This feeds the phenomenon of "polar amplification" that makes global warming faster and more intense at the poles, said Mr Guinaldo.
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Mint
15 hours ago
- Mint
Trump's attack on science is growing fiercer and more indiscriminate
SCIENTISTS IN AMERICA are used to being the best. The country is home to the world's foremost universities, hosts the lion's share of scientific Nobel laureates and has long been among the top producers of influential research papers. Generous funding helps keep the system running. Counting both taxpayer and industrial dollars, America spends more on research than any other country. The federal government doles out around $120bn a year, $50bn or so of which goes towards tens of thousands of grants and contracts for higher-education institutions, with the rest going to public research bodies. Now, however, many of America's top scientific minds are troubled. In the space of a few months the Trump administration has upended well-established ways of funding and conducting research. Actions with the stated goal of cutting costs and stamping out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are taking a toll on scientific endeavour. And such actions are broadening. On May 15th it emerged that the administration had cancelled grants made to Harvard University for research on everything from Arctic geochemistry to quantum physics, following a similar move against Columbia. The consequences of these cuts for America's scientific prowess could be profound. Under the current system, which was established soon after the second world war, researchers apply to receive federal funding from grant-making agencies, namely the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as well as the Departments of Defence (DoD) and Energy (DoE). Once a proposal has been assessed by a panel of peers and approved by the agency, the agreed money is paid out for a set period. This setup is facing tremendous upheaval. Since Mr Trump's return to the White House, somewhere in the region of $8bn has been cancelled or withdrawn from scientists or their institutions, equivalent to nearly 16% of the yearly federal grant budget for higher education. A further $12.2bn was rescinded but has since been reinstated by courts. The NIH and the NSF have cancelled more than 3,000 already-approved grants, according to Grant Watch, a tracking website run by academics (see chart 1); an unknown number have been scrapped by the DoE, the DoD and others. Most cancellations have hit research that Mr Trump and his team do not like, including work that appears associated with DEI and research on climate change, misinformation, covid-19 and vaccines. Other terminations have targeted work conducted at elite universities. Much more is under threat. The president hopes to slash the NIH budget by 38%, or almost $18bn; cut the NSF budget by $4.7bn, more than 50%; and scrap nearly half of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. All told, the proposed cuts to federal research agencies come to nearly $40bn. Many have already gone under the knife. In March the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the NIH, announced it would scrap 20,000 jobs, or 25% of its workforce. According to news reports, about 1,300 jobs, or more than 10%, have been lost at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which carries out environmental and climate research. Staff cuts were reportedly also due to start at the NSF, but have been temporarily blocked by courts. To save more money, the NIH, the NSF, the DoE and the DoD have launched restrictive caps on so-called indirect grant costs, which help fund facilities and administration at universities. (These limits have also been partly blocked by courts.) The administration says it has a plan. Mr Trump entered office on a mission to cut government waste, a problem from which the scientific establishment is not immune. On May 19th Michael Kratsios, his scientific adviser, stood up in front of the National Academies of Sciences and defended the administration's vision. It wants to improve science by making it better and more efficient, he said—to 'get more bang for America's research bucks". To do so, funding must better match the nation's priorities, and researchers should be freed from groupthink, empowered to challenge each other more freely without fear of convention and dogma. Shaking things up He is right that science has a number of stubborn problems that can hardly be solved by a business-as-usual approach. Scientific papers are less disruptive and innovative than they used to be, and more money has not always translated into speedier progress. In the pharmaceutical sciences, new drug approvals have plateaued in recent years despite ever larger budgets. Researchers also spend much too long writing grant proposals and completing similar administrative tasks, which keeps them away from their laboratories. Some of Mr Trump's proposals are, in fact, overdue. Many NASA watchers, for example, would agree with his plan to find commercial alternatives for the Space Launch System, a giant rocket being built to take people to the Moon and beyond but which is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. It would be hard, if not impossible, to improve the science funding system without some disruption. The problem, however, is that the administration's cuts are broader and deeper than they first appear, and its methods more chaotic. Take the focus on DEI, which the administration bemoans as a dangerous left-wing ideology. The agencies are targeting it because of an executive order banning them from supporting such work. But DEI is notoriously ill-defined. Programmes that are being cancelled are not just inclusive education schemes, but also projects that focus on the health of at-risk groups. Though it is mostly unclear why specific projects have been cancelled, Grant Watch keeps track of words that could have landed researchers in trouble. 'Latinx", for example, is a term for Hispanic people flagged as a telltale sign of DEI by Ted Cruz, a Republican senator. The NIH has cancelled a project on anal-cancer risk factors, the abstract of which uses the word Latinx. Another cancelled project concerns oral and throat cancer, for which gay men are at higher risk. Its abstract uses the phrase 'sexual and gender minority". There are many such examples. Other cuts may do more damage. Some NIH-funded research on vaccines has been cancelled, as have $11bn-worth of special funds from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for pandemic-related research. In March Ralph Baric, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who helped test the Moderna mRNA vaccine for covid-19, had several vaccine grants terminated. One project aimed to develop broad-spectrum vaccines for the same family of viruses that SARS-CoV-2 comes from; scientists fear other strains might cross from animals to humans. Both the CDC and NIH justified such cuts by saying that the covid-19 pandemic is over. But this is short-sighted, argues Dr Baric, given the number of worrying viruses. 'We're in for multiple pandemics" in the future, he says. 'I guess we'll have to buy the drugs from the Chinese." Even for scientists who have not been affected by cuts, other changes have made conducting research more challenging. For example, the NIH and NSF have both delayed funding new grants. Jeremy Berg, a biophysicist at the University of Pittsburgh who is tracking the delay in grant approvals, wrote in his May report that the NIH has released about $2.9bn less funding since the start of the year, relative to 2023 and 2024. According to media reports, the NSF has stopped approving grants entirely until further notice. At the NIH itself, the largest biomedical research centre in the country, lab supplies have become more difficult to procure. Department credit cards have been cut back and the administrative staff who would normally place orders and pay invoices have been fired. Scientists report shortages of reagents, lab animals and basic equipment like gloves. All these factors are destabilising for researchers—labs need a steady, predictable flow of cash and other resources to continue functioning. If next year's cuts to federal agencies are approved, more pain could be coming (see chart 2). The NSF's budget cuts, for instance, will hit climate and clean energy research. And, according to leaked documents, the research arm of NOAA would most probably cease to exist entirely. That would almost certainly mean defunding the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University, 'one of the best labs in the world for modelling the atmosphere", says Adam Sobel, a professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. NASA's Earth-observation satellites would likewise take a beating, potentially damaging the agency's ability to keep track of wildfires, sea-level rises, surface-temperature trends and the health of Earth's poles. Those effects would be felt by ordinary people both in America and abroad. And as Mr Trump increasingly wields grant terminations as bludgeons against institutions he dislikes, even projects that his own administration might otherwise have found worthy of support are being cancelled. Take his feud with Columbia. His administration has accused the institution of inaction against antisemitism on campus after Hamas's attack on October 7th 2023 and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza. On March 10th the NIH announced on X that it had terminated more than 400 grants to Columbia on orders from the administration, as a bargaining chip to get the university to take action. Some $400m of funding has been withheld, despite Columbia having laid out what it is doing to deal with the administration's concerns. Those grants include fundamental research on Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and HIV—topics that a spokesperson confirmed to The Economist represent priority areas for the NIH. Columbia is not alone. The administration is withholding $2.7bn from Harvard University, which has responded with a lawsuit. Within hours of Harvard refusing the administration's demands, scientists at some of the university's world-leading labs received stop-work orders. The administration has since said that Harvard will be awarded no more federal grants. Letters from the NIH, the NSF, the DoD and the DoE sent to Harvard around May 12th seem to cancel existing grants as well. While it is too soon to say exactly how many grants are involved, 188 newly terminated NSF grants from Harvard appeared in the Grant Watch database on May 15th, touching all scientific disciplines. A leaked internal communication from Harvard Medical School, the highest-ranked in the country, says that nearly all its federal grants have been cancelled. Cornell University says it too has received 75 stop-work orders for DoD-sponsored research on new materials, superconductors, robotics and satellites. The administration has also frozen over $1.7bn destined for Brown, Northwestern and Princeton universities and the University of Pennsylvania. As these efforts intensify, scientists are hoping that Congress and the courts will step in to limit the damage. Swingeing as the budget plan is, the administration's proposals are routinely modified by Congress. During Mr Trump's first term, similar proposals to squeeze scientific agencies were dismissed by Congress and he might meet opposition again. Susan Collins, the Republican chairwoman of the Senate appropriations committee, which is responsible for modifying the president's budget, has expressed concern that Mr Trump's cuts will hurt America's competitiveness in biotech and yield ground to China. Katie Britt, a Trump loyalist and senator for Alabama, has spoken to Robert F. Kennedy junior, the health secretary, about the the need for research to continue. (The University of Alabama at Birmingham is among the top recipients of NIH money.) When on May 14th Mr Kennedy appeared before lawmakers to defend the restructuring of the HHS, Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the Senate health committee, asked him to reassure Americans that the reforms 'will make their lives easier, not harder". Courts will have their say as well. On May 5th 13 universities sued the administration over the NSF's new indirect-cost cap, and the American Association of University Professors has likewise sued Mr Trump over his treatment of Harvard and Columbia. Harvard's suit is ongoing. Dr Baric is one researcher who has had his grant terminations reversed in this manner. His state of North Carolina, alongside 22 other states and the District of Columbia, sued the HHS over the revoked CDC funding for vaccine research. On May 16th the court ruled that the federal government had overstepped and not followed due process, and ordered the HHS to reinstate the funding. Reversing more cuts will take time, however. And the uncertainty and chaos in the short term could have lasting effects. A country where approved grants can be terminated before work is finished and appealing against decisions is difficult becomes a less attractive place to do science. Some researchers may consider moving abroad. American science has long seen itself as the world's best; today it faces its gravest moment ever. Curious about the world? To enjoy our mind-expanding science coverage, sign up to Simply Science, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
Time of India
a day ago
- Time of India
India taking active interest in Arctic, Antarctic: Shashi Tharoor
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said on Wednesday that India is taking active interest in the polar regions of Arctic and Antarctic as he chaired a meeting of Parliament's Standing Committee on External Affairs. Senior officials of the ministries of external affairs and earth sciences briefed the committee members. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Though developed countries are ahead of India in terms of presence in the two regions, which carry increasing geopolitical significance, India has also become involved and is taking active interest in both places, Tharoor said. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like No annual fees for life UnionBank Credit Card Apply Now Undo It was a very unusual and interesting topic, he said, noting that Arctic and Antarctic are very important for scientific exploration. While Arctic has faced some geopolitical conflict, Antarctic is considered a "global common", he added. India has been particularly active in Antarctic and has a station there as well, he added. Live Events The agenda of the meeting was "India's Role and Presence in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions".
News18
2 days ago
- News18
Science, local sleuthing identify 250-year-old shipwreck on Scottish island
London, Jul 23 (AP) When a schoolboy going for a run found the ribs of a wooden ship poking through the dunes of a remote Scottish beach, it sparked a hunt by archaeologists, scientists and local historians to uncover its story. Through a mix of high-tech science and community research, they have an answer. Researchers announced Wednesday that the vessel is very likely the Earl of Chatham, an 18th-century warship that saw action in the American War of Independence before a second life hunting whales in the Arctic — and then a stormy demise. 'I would regard it as a lucky ship, which is a strange thing to say about a ship that's wrecked," said Ben Saunders, senior marine archaeologist at Wessex Archaeology, a charity that helped community researchers conduct the investigation. 'I think if it had been found in many other places, it wouldn't necessarily have had that community drive, that desire to recover and study that material, and also the community spirit to do it," Saunders said. Uncovered after 250 years The wreck was discovered in February 2024 after a storm swept away sand covering it on Sanday, one of the rugged Orkney Islands that lie off Scotland's northern tip. It excited interest on the island of 500 people, whose history is bound up with the sea and its dangers. Around 270 shipwrecks have been recorded around the 50-square-kilometre island since the 15th century. Local farmers used their tractors and trailers to haul the 12 tons of oak timbers off the beach, before local researchers set to work trying to identify it. 'That was really good fun, and it was such a good feeling about the community – everybody pulling together to get it back," said Sylvia Thorne, one of the island's community researchers. 'Quite a few people are really getting interested in it and becoming experts." Dendrochronology — the science of dating wood from tree rings — showed the timber came from southern England in the middle of the 18th century. That was one bit of luck, Saunders said, because it coincides with 'the point where British bureaucracy's really starting to kick off" and detailed records were being kept. 'And so we can then start to look at the archive evidence that we have for the wrecks in Orkney," Saunders said. 'It becomes a process of elimination. 'You remove ones that are Northern European as opposed to British, you remove wrecks that are too small or operating out of the north of England and you really are down to two or three … and Earl of Chatham is the last one left." Wars and whaling Further research found that before it was the Earl of Chatham, the ship was HMS Hind, a 24-gun Royal Navy frigate built in Chichester on England's south coast in 1749. Its military career saw it play a part in the expansion — and contraction — of the British Empire. It helped Britain wrest control of Canada from France during the sieges of Louisbourg and Quebec in the 1750s, and in the 1770s served as a convoy escort during Britain's failed effort to hold onto its American colonies. Sold off by the navy in 1784 and renamed, the vessel became a whaling ship, hunting the huge mammals in the Arctic waters off Greenland. Whale oil was an essential fuel of the Industrial Revolution, used to lubricate machinery, soften fabric and light city streets. Saunders said that in 1787 there were 120 London-based whaling ships in the Greenland Sea, the Earl of Chatham among them. A year later, while heading out to the whaling ground, it was wrecked in bad weather off Sanday. All 56 crew members survived — more evidence, Saunders says, that this was a vessel blessed with luck. Community effort The ship's timbers are being preserved in a freshwater tank at the Sanday Heritage Centre while plans are discussed to put it on permanent display. Saunders said that the project is a model of community involvement in archaeology. 'The community have been so keen, have been so desirous to be involved and to find out things to learn, and they're so proud of it. It's down to them it was discovered, it's down to them it was recovered and it's been stabilized and been protected," he said. For locals, it's a link to the island's maritime past — and future. Finding long-buried wrecks could become more common as climate change alters the wind patterns around Britain and reshapes the coastline. 'One of the biggest things I've got out of this project is realizing how much the past in Sanday is just constantly with you — either visible or just under the surface," said Ruth Peace, another community researcher. (AP) RD RD (This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI) view comments First Published: July 23, 2025, 16:45 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
