Category: Oceans

Ocean Circulation: Important Role in Absorbing Carbon from the Atmosphere

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The oceans play a significant role in absorbing greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, and heat from the atmosphere. This absorption can help mitigate the early effects of human-emissions of carbon dioxide.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation acts as a conveyor belt of ocean water from Florida to Greenland. Along the journey north, water near the surface absorbs greenhouse gases, which sink down as the water cools near Greenland. In this way, the ocean effectively buries the gases deep below the surface.

Read the related story, NASA-MIT study evaluates efficiency of oceans as heat sink, atmospheric gases sponge.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Our Ocean Planet

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The ocean absorbs one-quarter of the carbon dioxide we produce by burning fossil fuels and stores 90 percent of the heat on our warming planet. But overfishing and pollution have brought the ocean to the breaking point. Its systems are starting to fail. Narrated by Sigourney Weaver, this short film about the interplay of climate change and the ocean makes the case that we need to help the ocean heal so that it can help us adapt to the mounting pressures of climate change.

Our Ocean Planet was produced by NRDC, Bloomfish Pictures, and Rock, Paper, Scissors. It premiered at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco on September 14, 2018.
Take action: https://on.nrdc.org/2MufPLt
Narrated by: Sigourney Weaver
Produced by: Natural Resources Defense Council
Fisher Stevens
Zara Duffy
Daniel Hinerfeld
Lisa Suatoni
Rock Paper Scissors

New Study Finds Sea Level Rise Accelerating

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Global sea level rise is accelerating incrementally over time rather than increasing at a steady rate, as previously thought, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data.

If the rate of ocean rise continues to change at this pace, sea level will rise 26 inches (65 centimeters) by 2100—enough to cause significant problems for coastal cities.

Full story: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2680/new-study-finds-sea-level-rise-accelerating/

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center