The surrounding seas have long been regarded as Japan's protective armour, or sometimes its womb. (Until 1945 Japan had never been occupied by an enemy.) Moreover, the oceans are a bountiful source of the nation's food.
Wave Glider robots, like Alex, could potentially improve such forecasts by measuring water temperature in the oceans surrounding a storm.
FORBES: Hurricane Isaac: Robot 'Alex' Rides Waves To Help Forecasting
He talks to the researchers who are chronicling the plasticisation of the oceans, a swelling suspended solution of pulverised plastic.
With the right research and enough forward planning, traveling the oceans as a working passenger can be a transformational experience, they say.
The gradients seem less marked over the oceans where a lot of gravity field information has already been determined by spacecraft that measure sea-surface topography.
As to what happened to the Palaeocene fauna, the evidence points not towards an errant asteroid but to a giant burp from the oceans, which released a huge amount of methane.
Thanks to a broad collection of water sample, the Tara Oceans expedition allows a better understanding of the environmental conditions affecting the sampled organisms at a global scale.
The last time we devoted a lesser proportion of our resources to defense, we were well protected by the oceans, in the midst of a depression, and without major international responsibilities, and even then it was a dereliction of duty.
Suppose the oceans warm up a bit, as they regularly do as part of natural climate cycles.
The International Programme for the State of the Ocean (IPSO) is now telling us the oceans have reached a do or die phase.
FORBES: Setting an Innovation Agenda for the Ocean: The Next Frontier for People Like Us
The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO-IOC) is part of a powerful coalition of governments, international organizations, civil society groups and private interests that are joining together under the banner of a Global Partnership for Oceans to address the blatant need for coordinated, global action and confront widely documented problems of over-fishing, marine degradation, and habitat loss.
The ten ASEAN countries, stretching across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, have a population of over 600 million and combined are the third largest economy in Asia.
The idea is that the internet is a shared environment, like the oceans or airspace, which requires international co-operation to make the best use of it.
The world's oceans have already absorbed a third to a half of the CO2 produced by humans, principally by the burning of fossil fuels, over the past 200 years.
Analyses of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans show a significant warming trend in tropical areas of the Northern Hemisphere, close to what is known as the thermal equator.
He said the amount should be even higher, but the world's oceans are absorbing quite a bit, keeping it out of the air.
With that computational power and the ability to tirelessly swim across vast oceans, the Wave Glider SV3 represents a big step forward in the state-of-the-art of unmanned monitoring and exploration.
ENGADGET: Wave Glider sea robot gets a new version, replete with more power and gear
But, she says, it is still unclear if liquid on the surface of Titan is in the form of puddles, lakes or oceans although the arrival of a spacecraft called Cassini in 2004 might solve the mystery when it drops a probe into Titan's atmosphere.
Forty million years ago, when the earth was warmer because there was more carbon dioxide in the air as a result of volcanic eruptions, the oceans are thought to have been 70 meters (or 229 feet) higher.
FORBES: What If Mike Bloomberg Is Right And A Climate Change Nightmare Is Here?
The Organization has prepared a major contribution on the role of Oceans for sustainable development, with several strong proposals for the sustainability of oceans and coastal areas.
The Ocean and Coasts Best Practices Area, where technologies and systems which contribute to our understanding of the oceans and coasts will be displayed, includes a presentation of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS).
The oceans have warmed up about a degree Fahrenheit as a whole.
Deep in oceans around the world lurks a type of worm without a mouth, anus or gut that makes its living by eating the bones of whales and other deceased sea creatures.
MSN: Zombie worm has no mouth �� but it feasts on whale bones
Every 20 to 30 years, the much colder water near the bottom of the oceans cycles up to the top, where it has a slight cooling effect on global temperatures until the sun warms that water.
FORBES: To The Horror Of Global Warming Alarmists, Global Cooling Is Here
That is, the moon pulls hardest on the Earth's oceans on the side facing the moon, making a bulge of water (high tide).
The current transports water from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans throughout the Arctic, said Tom Weingartner, a marine scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
CNN: Nuclear sub dives under the ice to explore climate change
The film is based on the results of a large-scale research programme on the oceans, called Census of Marine Life, whose main findings will be presented at the conference.
While a certain amount of mercury in the environment is natural, a growing worldwide pollution, especially of our oceans, appears to be increasing the risk of high mercury levels in some of the fish we eat.
The industrious Dutch have strong enough dikes and clever enough engineering to survive a one meter rise in the oceans, even though two-thirds of their country lies below sea level.
应用推荐