#ocean

Upward Spiral

/ PK Read / Leave a comment

A new study published  in Nature by Harvard University researchers corrects a few measurements when it comes to changes in the sea level over the past century.

On the one hand, researchers wanted to gain a more accurate picture of how quickly sea levels are actually rising in an era of global warming.

Blue Garden, 200 meters beneath the ocean surface. The top of the sphere could be elevated above the surface for sunlight and fresh air, and retracted during storms. Image: Shimizu Corporation

Blue Garden, 200 meters beneath the ocean surface. The top of the sphere could be elevated above the surface for sunlight and fresh air, and retracted during storms.
Image: Shimizu Corporation

On the other hand, they re-examined assumptions on the speed of sea level change over the past century by re-assessing data and ‘fingerprints’ used to measure the change in sea levels between 1900-1990.

Current predictive models for how quickly glacial melting will impact coastlines are based on analyses of past sea levels showing a gradual rise over many decades.

What the research team under Carling Hay and Eric Morrow found upon re-examining data gathered over the course of the 20th century was that sea levels had risen much less than previously thought, in some cases up to 30% less, by 1990.

Which means that the current rising levels didn’t happen slowly over the course of a long century – they have occurred much more quickly over the past twenty years due to a wide variety of factors.

This may require some adjustments to coastal planning.

Good thing Japan’s Shimizu Corporation just released these drafts for an underwater town, poetically dubbed ‘Blue Garden‘.

Blue Garden, interior view. The sphere would contain homes, stores, offices, a hotel and research facilities. Image: Shimizu Corporation

Blue Garden, interior view. The sphere would contain homes, stores, offices, a hotel and research facilities.
Image: Shimizu Corporation

The proposed city would be sustainable and energy self-sufficient using thermal power generated by temperature differences between the water surface and ocean depths, as well as from methane-producing micro-organism factories.

The Corporation says it could produce the spherical abodes, which would be attached to the ocean floor and could accommodate up to 5000 people, by 2030.

The Blue Garden spheres could be connected into networks of spheres to create cities. Image: Shimizu Corporation

The Blue Garden spheres could be connected into networks of spheres to create cities.
Image: Shimizu Corporation

Invisible Flow Dynamics

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The flame is lit. The images here are all from a short video, The Hidden Complexities of the Simple Match. Images: V. Miller, M. Tilghman, R. Hanson/Stanford Univ./

The flame is lit.
The images here are all from a short video, The Hidden Complexities of the Simple Match.
Images: V. Miller, M. Tilghman, R. Hanson/Stanford Univ./

By now, most people have heard about the vast amount of plastic that ends up in the world’s oceans, and how, once there, plastic bags, wrapping, toys, really all the stuff we make and use in this Age of Plastic, gets ground and beaten into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic until it is no longer recognizable as a human-made item, just a ever-tinier piece of material that is nonetheless non-biodegradable.

Which is one of the characteristics that makes petroleum-based plastic so very different from most other human-made utility products on the planet. It takes hundreds and thousands of years to break down the wrapping or plastic sack which we produce to be used for perhaps a few weeks or months, or even just once.

The images here show the turbulence of hot gases around a match as it is lit and then blown out – the unseen flow that takes place before our eyes, when all we see is a flame lit, and a flame extinguished.

Below is a map of the flow of ocean plastic around the world – researchers estimate the plastic refuse that was quantified and charted accounts for perhaps 1% of all ocean plastic. The rest is out there, getting up to all kinds of incendiary environmental nonsense – and while it’s right there in front of us, we are unable to see it.

Concentrations of plastic debris in surface waters of the global ocean. Colored circles indicate mass concentrations (legend on top right). The map shows average concentrations in 442 sites (1,127 surface net tows). Gray areas indicate the accumulation zones predicted by a global surface circulation model (6). Image/caption: Andrés Cózar et al./PNAS

Concentrations of plastic debris in surface waters of the global ocean. Colored circles indicate mass concentrations. The map shows average concentrations in 442 sites. Gray areas indicate the accumulation zones predicted by a global surface circulation model.
Click here for a larger image.
Image/caption: Andrés Cózar et al./PNAS

 

 

 

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/plastic-trash-piling-oceans-map-181700451.html

Floor of Sand, Roof of Water

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From the new book Shorebreak. Photo: Clark Little

From the new book Shorebreak.
Photo: Clark Little

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time (every possible minute) on the beaches of California. And one of my favorite activities was to run after the receding waves as far as I dared,, right up to where they were beginning another forward surge, and then turn and sprint back to safety. Or not, sometimes.

Getting away with nothing more than wet ankles counted as winning. Getting drenched or knocked over didn’t. Sure, it was a dangerous game. That’s what made it exciting.

One view I always wanted to see but never did (because I never dared or lost badly enough) was the dry sand beneath the roof of an oncoming wave. And here it is, courtesy of photographer Clark Little in his new book of waves, Shorebreak. Someone who dared to wait for the roof of water, and took a picture for the rest of us.

I worked as a translator on a film a few years ago that looked at the dry land beneath the waves, but in that case, the waves were frozen in icy forms. The film, Unter Dem Eis (Under the Ice) was a German-made documentary about the Inuit of the Canadian eastern seaboard and their tradition of gathering a bounty of winter mussels from beneath the frozen sea.

Gathering mussels Under The Ice, hastening before the sea returns. Source: Context Film

Gathering mussels Under The Ice, hastening before the sea returns.
Source: Context Film

The harvest was only possible for a few hours a year, on days of extremely low tide when the sea beneath the ice retreated enough to allow for a quick expedition.

It looks like walking under water, and in a way, it is. Or was. As the Atlantic Ocean warms and there are fewer days when mussels can be gathered without the ice roof collapsing, the tradition is fading.

Still, it’s a vision out of a dream, walking, or sprinting, on the floor of the ocean, however briefly.