Tag: Scripps oceanography

Glaciers and Sea Level Rise

Using helicopters, icebreakers, fishing vessels, and autonomous surface and underwater vehicles for over a decade, Fiammetta Straneo and her group have been probing the edge of massive calving glaciers in iceberg-choked fjords in Greenland to explore what is the Achille’s heel of glaciers – the marine edge where glaciers meet the sea.

Their goal? Collapsing ice shelves and calving of large icebergs in Greenland and Antarctica have recently become major drivers of sea level rise. The rapidity of these changes has come as a surprise, revealing major gaps in our understanding of how ice sheets respond to a changing climate. To a large extent, these gaps are due to a lack of measurements so Fiammetta and her group have probed in these polar environments to improve models of sea-level rise predictions.

Watch — Navigating the Perilous Waters at the Edge of Glaciers to Understand Sea Level Rise – 2019 Keeling Lecture

California Seaweed

Kelp cutters once harvested tons of the nearshore kelp off the San Diego County coastline, producing additives for your ice cream, beer and pharmaceuticals.

And of course, anyone who has had a California Roll or a bowl of miso soup is familiar with the centuries-old use of Nori.

But now Scripps researchers are working to uncover other value from the ubiquitous red, green and brown algae that thrives in our waters, even exploring the use of seaweed to reduce methane produced by dairy cows – and perhaps even improving their health and productivity.

Join Scripps Oceanography’s Jennifer Smith and entrepreneur Brant Chlebowski as they tell the story of their collaboration on applied aquaculture research that has sparked the formation of the California Seaweed Company.

Watch — Food, Feed and Climate Change – Emerging Opportunities for Shore Based Seaweed Aquaculture

Eavesdropping on Whales

Since ancient seafarers first heard the strange calls of whales, humans have been fascinated by their meaning – from Flipper’s clicks and trills to the long serenades of Humpbacks. Inhabiting the dark ocean depths, whales use sound in many different ways – from feeding to navigating to finding friends and family.

Join postdoctoral scholar Goldie Phillips for a captivating look into how scientists use whale calls to study whale populations.

Watch — Eavesdropping on Whales: How Whale Calls Inform Science

Lakes Beneath Antarctic Ice: Deep, Dark and Mysterious

Where is one of the last places on earth you would expect to find a never-before known lake? Certainly, any of earth’s best-known deserts…the Sahara, Gobi, or Kalahari right?

Technically fitting the definition of a desert by standards of precipitation, Antarctica could also be on that well-known list of dry places.

But Antarctica has been imaged constantly for years across the entire visible and invisible spectrum and alas an unknown lake never popped up in any pictures until….who would think it…

In 2006, Helen Amanda Fricker was sitting at her desk studying new satellite data when she made a starting discovery – a set of active lakes that exist underneath the ice in Antarctica. Join Helen, a 25-year veteran of Antarctic ice sheet research, and learn about the discovery, exploration and drilling of these mysterious phenomena at the southern reaches of our planet.

Watch Lakes Beneath Antarctic Ice: Deep, Dark and Mysterious

Feeling the Heat: The Biology of Ocean Warming

The effects of climate change on fauna and flora across the globe are more and more evident – the Pika has changed its range, and may disappear, sea stars have been visited by a withering collapse in population, insects from bark beetles to mosquitoes are inhabiting new territories, bringing disease to humans and destruction to forests. And close to home, the ocean temperature recently hit the highest temperature ever recorded.

As our changing climate provides a natural laboratory for examining how organisms evolve adaptations to environmental extremes, Scripps’ Oceanography’s Ron Burton asks: can evolution keep up with rapid climate change or are most species likely to go extinct as temperatures rise?

Ron shares about the cutting-edge genetic tools he uses to understand how populations of tidepool animals cope with rapid temperature changes and how evolution has shaped those responses across the geographic range of each species.

Watch Feeling the Heat: The Biology of Ocean Warming