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NEWS RELEASES
WHOI scientists aim to improve the study of marine heatwaves
Researchers call for regional and context-specific approaches to these extreme events
Coastal retreat in Alaska is accelerating because of compound climate impacts
Observations have shown coastal erosion as an increasing Arctic hazard, but other hazards—including sea level rise and permafrost thaw subsidence—have received less attention.
A new report on coastal resilience
New report released during NY Climate Week and upcoming UN General Assembly high-level plenary meeting on threats posed by sea level rise
Can adding iron to the ocean help it absorb CO2?
A newly published article spells out the work needed to assess the potential of ocean iron fertilization as a low cost, scalable, and rapidly deployable method of mCDR.
Sea Surface Temperature Research Provides Clear Evidence of Human-Caused Climate Change
New oceanic research provides clear evidence of a human “fingerprint” on climate change and shows that specific signals from human activities have altered the seasonal cycle amplitude of sea surface temperatures.
WHOI | OCEANUS
A Change Has Come in the Arctic
On a long voyage across the Arctic Ocean, an MIT-WHOI graduate students finds chemical clues that climate change has already had impacts on the region.
Unearthing Long-Gone Hurricanes
A graduate student at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tracks a trail of clues left behind on the seafloor by hurricanes as they stream across the ocean.
Up in the Sky!
Nope, it’s not a bird or a plane. It’s a drone on a scientific mission to restore a river long impaired by dams and to help bring back populations of prized fish that once flourished in it. For more than 300 years, dams on the Coonamessett River in Falmouth, Mass., powered mills and created expanses of cranberry bogs. But they also made the river straighter, less pristine, and warmer—conditions that led to the disappearance of…
A Double Whammy for Corals
Scientists know that gradually rising ocean temperatures can push corals past a threshold and cause them to bleach. But combine this chronic stress with an acute short-term weather shift, and the amplified impacts can be sudden and devastating. That’s what a research team led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution discovered in June 2015 on Dongsha Atoll, a circular coral reef surrounding a lagoon in the remote South China Sea. The Dongsha corals were already feeling…
Will Oxygen in the Ocean Continue to Decline?
The living, breathing ocean may be slowly starting to suffocate. The ocean has lost more than two percent of its oxygen over the past-half century, and oxygen-depleted “dead zones” continue to expand throughout the global ocean. This deoxygenation poses a serious threat to marine life and ecosystems. Yet scientists have had no way to measure how fast oxygen depletion happens. But now a research team at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has developed for the first…
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IN THE NEWS - RESEARCH HIGLIGHTS
Study offers first definitive proof that Gulf Stream has weakened
“New research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution offers the first conclusive evidence that the Gulf Stream has weakened. The powerful ocean current off the East Coast influences regional weather, climate and fisheries, and the finding could have significant implications both for New England and the global climate.”
What Happens to Marine Life When There Isn’t Enough Oxygen?
In September of 2017, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral scholar Maggie Johnson was conducting an experiment with a colleague in Bocas del Toro off the…
Maine’s having a lobster boom. A bust may be coming.
The waters off Maine’s coast are warming, and no one knows what that’s going to mean for the state’s half-billion-dollar-a-year lobster industry—the largest single-species fishery in North America. Some fear that continued warming could cause the lobster population to collapse. To understand what’s happening to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Maine, says Glen Gawarkiewicz, an oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, you have to look beyond it—see how it’s affected by the atmosphere, ocean currents, and rivers that flow into it.