Results from a 2016 research cruise show ocean acidification has interfered with shell development of zooplankton that are a critical part of the marine food web.
Understanding the biologic contribution of CO2 to megacities' overall carbon emissions will be important for designing and evaluating mitigation strategies.
While NOAA has had to cancel many of its planned research surveys in Alaska, it has been able to conduct a number of scaled-back research surveys in 2020. One such survey that will be finishing up this week is in the Arctic and was conducted on board NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson to collect critical data supporting a long time series involving many scientific partners.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory reached a seasonal peak of 417.1 parts per million for 2020 in May, the highest monthly reading ever recorded. Monthly CO2 values at Mauna Loa first breached the 400 ppm threshold in 2014, and are now at levels not experienced by the atmosphere in several million years.
Using a new powerful NOAA global climate model, NOAA and partner researchers show that big storm-induced spikes in sea levels will increase in the future from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic coast as warming progresses, but will be driven by differing forces.
Analysis of larval crab sampled from coastal waters identified examples of damage to the outer shell of numerous larval Dungeness crabs, as well as the loss of hair-like sensory structures crabs use to orient themselves to their surroundings.
Carbon dioxide levels reached the highest seasonal peak recorded in 61 years of observations at NOAA's Mauna Loa observatory. This the seventh consecutive year of steep global increases in concentrations of this important greenhouse gas pollutant.
New research by NOAA and partners based on extensive sampling of the global ocean finds that the ocean absorbed 34 billion metric tons of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels from 1994 to 2007 — a four-fold increase to 2.6 billion metric tons per year when compared to the period starting from the Industrial Revolution in 1800 to 1994.
Carbon dioxide levels measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory averaged more than 410 parts per million in April and May, the highest monthly averages ever recorded.