Ocean

Research reveals that oceans store 20% more carbon dioxide than previously estimated, primarily through plankton transporting carbon to the seabed. This new understanding, however, doesn’t significantly impact the current CO2 emission crisis. The ocean’s capacity to store atmospheric carbon dioxide is some 20% greater than the estimates contained in the latest IPCC report.[1] These are the findings of a study that was published in the journal Nature on December 6, 2023, led by an international team including a biologist from the CNRS.[2] The scientists looked at the role played by plankton in the natural transport of carbon from surface waters down to the seabed. Plankton gobble up carbon dioxide and, as they grow, convert it into organic tissue via photosynthesis. When they die, part of the plankton is transformed into particles known as ‘marine snow’.  Being denser than seawater, these particles sink dow...

Several decades ago, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere was well below 400 parts per million, climate scientists began warning of the negative consequences for Earth’s climate of burning fossil fuels. From those early warnings, a consensus emerged that carbon emissions would need to be lowered (and eventually zeroed out) to avoid dangerous consequences of global warming such as extreme heat, stronger storms, and more intense floods and droughts. Today the atmospheric CO2 concentration is well over 400 parts per million and still rising, and a plethora of research and recent severe weather events point to the fact that these dangerous consequences are already happening. Governments have set ambitious goals to curb emissions, and some progress is being made, but serious questions and concerns about the slow pace of this progress abound.  For each approach to carbon dioxide removal, questions rema...

In November of 2020, a freak wave came out of the blue, lifting a lonesome buoy off the coast of British Columbia 17.6 meters high (58 feet). The four-story wall of water was finally confirmed in February 2022 as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded at the time. Such an exceptional event is thought to occur only once every 1,300 years. And unless the buoy had been taken for a ride, we might never have known it even happened. For centuries, rogue waves were considered nothing but nautical folklore. It wasn’t until 1995 that myth became fact. On the first day of the new year, a nearly 26-meter-high wave (85 feet) suddenly struck an oil-drilling platform roughly 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the coast of Norway. At the time, the so-called Draupner wave defied all previous models scientists had put together. Since then, dozens more rogue waves have been recorded (some even in lakes), and while the one that surfaced near Ucluele...