Feature Publication Archive
Bednaršek, N., G.A. Tarling, D.C.E. Bakker, S. Fielding, and R.A. Feely (2014): Dissolution dominating calcification process in polar pteropods close to the point of aragonite undersaturation. PLoS ONE, 9(10), e109183, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109183.
Sea snails that build aragonite shells are also known as pteropods. They are a prolific upper-ocean zooplankton, especially abundant in high-latitudinal environments in the Arctic and the Southern Ocean but also found in highly productive upwelling regimes such as the California Current System. They represent a food source for higher trophic levels, including varieties of fish, birds, and whales, and they play a key role in energy transfer and carbon fluxes in these regions by exerting a high grazing pressure with large feeding webs, faeces, and pseudofaeces sinking rapidly and... more »
Cohen, J., J.A. Screen, J.C. Furtado, M. Barlow, D. Whittleston, D. Coumou, J. Francis, K. Dethloff, D. Entekhabi, J. Overland, and J. Jones (2014): Recent Arctic amplification and extreme mid-latitude weather. Nature Geosci., 7(9), doi: 10.1038/ngeo2234, 627–637.
Improved understanding of new potential Arctic-lower latitude weather linkages and implications for weather and climate predictions
The role of the Arctic in the global climate system is based on multiple processes unique to the Arctic, driven by modest global warming. Arctic temperatures continue to increase at least 3 times the rate of mid-latitude temperatures. Multiple feedbacks, such as clouds, loss of sea ice and snow cover, heat storage in the ocean, and atmospheric dynamics are a hypothesized cause for this phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. For example, more... more »
Matsumoto, H., D.R. Bohnenstiehl, J. Tournadre, R.P. Dziak, J.H. Haxel, T.-K.A. Lau, M. Fowler, and S.A. Salo (2014): Antarctic icebergs: A significant natural sound source in the Pacific Ocean. Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 15, doi: 10.1002/2014GC005454.
Previous research indicates that low-frequency ocean noise levels have risen 3 to 4 times since the early 1960s in some areas. This rise has been largely attributed to increased global ship traffic. The scientific community has become increasingly concerned about the adverse effects of anthropogenic (human-made) inputs to the marine ecosystem, and in particular to marine animals, which rely on sound to aid in migration, feeding, and breeding.
PMEL’s Acoustics Program has been monitoring the low-frequency acoustic... more »
Toomey, D.R., R.M. Allen, A.H. Barclay, S.W. Bell, P.D. Bromirski, R.L. Carlson, X. Chen, J.A . Collins, R.P. Dziak, B. Evers, D.W. Forsyth, P. Gerstoft, E.E.E. Hooft, D. Livelybrooks, J.A . Lodewyk, D.S. Luther, J.J. McGuire, S.Y. Schwartz, M. Tolstoy, A.M. Tréhu, M. Weirathmueller, and W.S.D. Wilcock (2014): The Cascadia Initiative: A sea change in seismological studies of subduction zones. Oceanography, 27(2), doi:10.5670/oceanog.2014.49, 138-150.
There is increasing scientific and public awareness that the Cascadia subduction zone, an active plate boundary fault off the coast of the Pacific Northwest (PNW), is capable of generating great earthquakes (magnitude 9 or larger). Concern over the earthquake hazard of this zone motivated creation of the Cascadia Initiative, an NSF sponsored community project to deploy and maintain an array of onshore/offshore seismic and geodetic sensors. PMEL scientists are co-investigators on the project and have led four oceanographic expeditions to collect data from the seafloor seismic components of... more »
Chen, K., L. Ciannelli, M.B. Decker, C. Ladd, W. Cheng, Z. Zhou, and K.-S. Chan (2014): Reconstructing source-sink dynamics in a population with a pelagic dispersal phase. PLoS ONE, 9(5), e95316, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0095316.
Many marine species have a larval phase. In this phase, larvae drifts with the prevailing ocean currents before settling in nursery locations. In such cases, the spawning locations can be represented as sources and the settling locations of the juvenile or adult stages as sinks. Population connectivity and directionality of flow between sources and sinks can have important implications for management and conservation. The reconstruction of source-sink dynamics is often hampered by limited knowledge of the spatial distribution of either the source or sink components or lack of information... more »