California’s unique geography, with some of the continent’s highest mountains situated close to the broad expanse of the Pacific Ocean helps make California’s precipitation regime the most volatile in the country. This volatility, characterized by large natural swings between drought and extremely rainy years make water resource management in California notoriously difficult. Global climate change is expected to exacerbate the volatility by decreasing the frequency of regional precipitation while increasing its intensity. Join meteorologist Alexander Gershunov to learn how he and other researchers quantify and analyze this volatility to understand the mechanisms behind these changes, and project their anticipated impacts on California.
Category: Global Warming and Climate Change
Oxygen Loss in the Ocean: The Blinding Truth
Ocean oxygen levels are changing globally as a result of both natural and human-influenced processes, and in some areas low oxygen events are becoming more common. While research on terrestrial animals has shown that low oxygen levels can affect vision – a vital function for finding food and shelter and avoiding predators – the impact of low oxygen on marine life is much less well understood.
Join Scripps postdoctoral scholar Lillian McCormick for an in depth look at how and why oxygen is changing in the ocean and how her research is providing insight into the impacts of low oxygen on vision in marine invertebrates. Learn about her stunning new research results, her plans for future investigations and what we can do about oxygen decline in the ocean.
Watch Biological Impacts of Oxygen Loss in the Ocean: The Blinding Truth.
Oceans Out of Breath
Scripps climate scientist Yassir Eddebbar takes you on an exploration of the ocean’s interior to reveal a fascinating phenomenon – oxygen minimum zones (OMZs).
Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) are regions of the global ocean that present low dissolved oxygen concentrations. Although they represent only a small fraction of the global ocean volume, they are considered to be an important sink for fixed nitrogen, contributing 30-50% of the oceanic nitrogen removal. They are important sources of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O), the latter also involved in the destruction of stratospheric ozone.
Focusing on his work in the tropical Pacific, Eddebbar explains what causes OMZs, how they are likely to change in response to climate change, and their potential to impact marine ecosystems and fisheries as climate warms.
Watch Oceans Out of Breath: Oxygen Minimum Zones in a Warming Climate.
Understanding the Arctic Climate System
The Arctic is changing rapidly in response to global climate and economic activity and yet much of it remains unexplored with modern scientific techniques.
Jeff Bowman is a biological oceanographer who studies marine microbial communities. In this presentation at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography he describes his group’s work in the Arctic as they seek to understand the ecological implications of changing sea ice conditions.
They are also preparing to participate in the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) Expedition, an unprecedented multi-national effort to study the high Arctic across a complete seasonal cycle.
What is in the Air We Breathe?
“What we do in my group is we zoom in on the aerosols.”
Vicki Grassian and her team look at aerosols at a microscopic level to determine their impact on our health and our climate. Aerosols can be mineral dust and sea spray from the ocean or created by human activity or stem from any number of sources. They can travel across the globe impacting people, animals, and the planet in their wake.
Grassian’s work seeks to understand how aerosols and other gases not only affect us but how we might harness them for solar geoengineering.