Posts Tagged ‘Pacific Ocean’

La Niña may come back for a third straight year

March 4, 2012

P. Gosselin reports on his blog that Norwegian scientists are already predicting that La Niña may come back for a 3rd year.

(Related: La Niña will last well into 2011 and could extend into 2012)

It wasn’t all that long ago when a number of climate scientists were projecting the Earth would soon fall into an almost permanent, increasing El Niño mode, where the surface temperatures of the equatorial Pacific would always be like what we saw in 1998 – all man-made.

Today a number of German-language papers are reporting that Norwegian scientist Tore Furevik of the Bjerknes Centre of the University of Bergen says he expects the opposite to happen at least this year. Furevik says that La Niña may come back for third straight year. “The situation is simlar to the previous year,” he says.

Die Welt here writes that “there are no signs that La Nina is going to disappear anytime soon” and that according to Norwegian experts “it will occur even more strongly than in 2011″.

The Wiener Zeitung of Vienna, Austria adds:

The La Niña phenomena has been persisting since 2010 and there are no signs of it going away. We had this strong cooling in 2010 and instead of getting warmer, we stayed in a long cold phase’, said Furevik. “And it appears as if an even stronger La Niña will occur.’”

Furevik’s La Niña forecast contradicts the experts’ forecast, where an ensemble of models show the trend towards an El Niño for the 2nd half of the year:

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Tenacious life – a new species of snail fish found at depth of 7000m

October 14, 2010

 

The new type of snailfish was found living at a depth of 22,966ft (7,000m) in the Peru-Chile trench of the South East Pacific Ocean.

Snailfish found living at a depth of 22,966ft Peru-Chile trench of the South East Pacific Ocean. Photo: Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen

 

Hot on the heels of discovering a biological oasis of life in hot, inky-black waters at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake in the midst of hundreds of geothermal vents comes news of  a new type of snailfish found living at a depth of 22,966ft (7,000m) in the Peru-Chile trench of the South East Pacific Ocean.

The Telegraph reports:

The 10 inch long tadpole-shaped creature with a large head, tiny eyes and pelvic fins has adapted to living in an icy cold, pitch black environment under constant, crushing pressure. Mass groupings of cusk-eels and large crustacean scavengers were also found living in the narrow abyss despite the inhospitable conditions.

The findings, in one of the deepest places on the planet, were made by a team of marine biologists from the University of Aberdeen and experts from Japan and New Zealand. The team took part in a three-week expedition, during which they used deep-sea imaging technology to take 6,000 pictures at depths between 14,764ft (4,500m) and 26,247ft (8,000m) within the trench.

The Peru-Chile Trench

The Peru-Chile Trench: Image via Wikipedia

The mission was the seventh to take place as part of HADEEP, a collaborative research project between the University of Aberdeen’s Oceanlab and the University of Tokyo’s Ocean Research Institute, supported by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA).

Oceanlab’s Dr Alan Jamieson, who led the expedition said these latest discoveries helped shed new light on life in the depths of the Earth. “Our findings, which revealed diverse and abundant species at depths previously thought to be void of fish, will prompt a rethink into marine populations at extreme depths,” he said.

“This expedition was prompted by our findings in 2008 and 2009 off Japan and New Zealand where we discovered new species of snailfish known as Liparids inhabiting trenches … at depths of approximately 7,000 metres – with each trench hosting its own unique species of the fish.

“To test whether these species would be found in all trenches, we repeated our experiments on the other side of the Pacific Ocean off Peru and Chile, some 6,000 miles (9,656km) from our last observations.

“What we found was that indeed there was another unique species of snailfish living at 7,000 metres – entirely new to science – which had never been caught or seen before.”

The new snailfish will not be named until it is officially confirmed as a new species.

The estimates of the number of unknown marine species may be at the top end of the range estimated between 1 million and 10 million species. However, plant and animal diversity looks insignificant compared to the sea’s micro-organisms, which may number 1 billion. Their diversity is “spectacular”.

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La Niña chills out the Pacific – could cause drought

October 4, 2010

“The tropical Pacific Ocean has transitioned from last winter’s El Niño conditions to a cool La Niña, as shown by new data about sea surface heights, collected by the U.S-French Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 oceanography satellite” writes Science Daily.

La Niña continues to strengthen in the Pacific Ocean, as shown in the latest satellite data of sea surface heights from the NASA/European Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 satellite. The image is based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Sept. 3, 2010. Higher (warmer) than normal sea surface heights are indicated by yellows and reds, while lower (cooler) than normal sea surface heights are depicted in blues and purples. Green indicates near-normal conditions. (Credit: NASA/JPL Ocean Surface Topography Team)

“This La Niña has strengthened for the past four months, is strong now and is still building,” said Climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “It will surely impact this coming winter’s weather and climate.

“After more than a decade of mostly dry years on the Colorado River watershed and in the American Southwest, and only one normal rain year in the past five years in Southern California, water supplies are dangerously low,” Patzert added. “This La Niña could deepen the drought in the already parched Southwest and could also worsen conditions that have fueled Southern California’s recent deadly wildfires.” NASA will continue to track this change in Pacific climate.

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