ocean – Pelasphere

COP26 is the 2021 United Nations climate change conference

For nearly three decades the UN has been bringing together almost every country on earth for global climate summits – called COPs – which stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’. In that time climate change has gone from being a fringe issue to a global priority. Specifically part of the COP conference is focused on our oceans and seas. Part of the COP discussions includes the ‘Ocean Decade’.

What is the Ocean Decade?

The Ocean Decade provides a ‘once-in a-lifetime’ opportunity to create a new foundation across the
science-policy interface to strengthen the management of the ocean and coasts for the benefit of humanity and to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The Ocean Decade Implementation Plan outlines ten Decade Challenges, representing the most immediate and pressing needs of the Decade.

Link to the plan below:

When variations in Earth’s orbit drive Phytoplankton evolution

Coccolithophores are microscopic algae that form tiny limestone plates, called coccoliths, around their single cells. The shape and size of coccoliths varies according to the species. After their death, coccolithophores sink to the bottom of the ocean and their coccoliths accumulate in sediments, which faithfully record the detailed evolution of these organisms over geological time. […]

Humans Guilty of Breaking an Fundamental Oceanic Law of Nature

A new international study carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) has examined the distribution of biomass across all life in the oceans, from bacteria to whales. Their quantification of human impact reveals a fundamental alteration to one of life’s largest scale patterns. As policymakers […]

The Ocean Decade at COP 26

COP26 is the 2021 United Nations climate change conference For nearly three decades the UN has been bringing together almost every country on earth for global climate summits – called COPs – which stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’. In that time climate change has gone from being a fringe issue to a global priority. […]

Marine Plankton helps produce clouds, but existing clouds keep new ones at bay

Marine plankton breathe more than 20 million tons of sulfur into the air every year, mostly in the form of dimethyl sulfide (DMS). In the air, this chemical can transform into sulfuric acid, which helps produce clouds by giving a site for water droplets to form. Over the scale of the world’s oceans, this process […]

Australian wildfires triggered massive Phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean

Clouds of smoke and ash from wildfires that ravaged Australia in 2019 and 2020 triggered widespread phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean thousands of miles downwind to the east, a new Duke University-led study by an international team of scientists finds. The study study, published in Nature, is the first to conclusively link a large-scale […]