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By Rosa SULLEIRO BARCELONA, April 12, 2024 (AFP) – Scientists at a United Nations conference in Spain called Friday for more research into the sharp rise in ocean temperatures which they warn could have devastating consequences. “The changes are happening so fast that we are not able to keep pace with the impact,” the executive secretary of UNESCO’s intergovernmental oceanographic commission, Vidar Helgesen, told AFP on the sidelines of the three-day “Ocean Decade” conference in […]
UNITED NATIONS, United States, Jan 24, 2024 (AFP) – The island nation of Palau made history this week when it became the first country to ratify last year’s historic United Nations treaty for the protection of the Earth’s oceans. The so-called High Seas Treaty was adopted by UN member states in June, after more than 15 years of discussions. It can go into effect 120 days after being ratified by 60 countries — a goal […]
PARIS, July 12, 2023 (AFP) – Over the past 20 years huge swathes of the world’s oceans have changed colour, displaying a subtle greening towards the tropics that researchers say points to the effect of climate change on life in the world’s seas. In the new research published on Wednesday, scientists said they had detected shifts in colours across more than half of the world’s oceans — an expanse bigger than Earth’s total land area. […]
By Lisa Martin and Pitcha Dangprasith Agence France-Presse BAN KHUN SAMUT CHIN, Thailand, June 23, 2023 (AFP) – Each morning, four children stand barefoot in a line and proudly sing the national anthem as the Thai flag is raised outside their school, perched on a finger of land surrounded by the sea. They are the last pupils left at the school in Ban Khun Samut Chin, a coastal village less than 10 kilometres (six miles) […]
PARIS, May 26, 2023 (AFP) – Climate change-driven shifts in the circulation of waters to the deepest reaches of the ocean around Antarctica, which could reverberate across the planet and intensify global warming, are happening decades “ahead of schedule”, according to new research. Scientists have said that an acceleration of melting Antarctic ice and rising temperatures, driven by the emission of planet-warming gases, is expected to have a significant effect on the global network of […]
PARIS, May 4, 2023 (AFP) – With sea surface temperatures swelling to new highs in recent weeks, scientists warn that humanity’s carbon pollution has the potential to turn oceans into a global warming “time bomb”. Oceans absorb most of the heat caused by planet-warming gases, causing heatwaves that harm aquatic life, altering weather patterns and disrupting crucial planet-regulating systems. While sea surface temperatures normally recede relatively quickly from annual peaks, this year they stayed high, […]
by Kelly MACNAMARA Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Some send divers in speed boats, others dispatch submersible robots to search the seafloor, and one team deploys a “mud missile” — all tools used by scientists to scour the world’s oceans for the next potent cancer treatment or antibiotic. A medicinal molecule could be found in microbes scooped up in sediment, be produced by porous sponges or sea squirts — barrel-bodied creatures that cling to […]
United Nations, United States (AFP) — Actor and activist Jane Fonda on Monday warned that humanity is “losing the ocean,” as two weeks of negotiations begin at the United Nations on a treaty to protect the high seas. “The ocean provides us with 50 percent of our oxygen, and it feeds billions of people — and it’s dying,” the 85-year-old American icon told AFP in an interview. She is in New York to deliver a […]
Paris, France (AFP) by Daniel Lawler Fish that have lost food due to mass coral bleaching are getting into more unnecessary fights, causing them to expend precious energy and potentially threatening their survival, new research said Wednesday. With the future of the world’s coral reefs threatened by climate change, a team of researchers studied how a mass bleaching event affected 38 species of butterflyfish. The colourfully patterned reef fish are the first to feel the […]
by Kelly MACNAMARA Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Even without any future global warming, Greenland’s melting ice sheet will cause major sea level rise, with potentially “ominous” implications over this century as temperatures continue to rise, according to a study published Monday. Rising sea levels — pushed up mainly by melting ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica — are set to redraw the map over centuries and could eventually swamp land currently home to […]
by Marlowe Hood Agence France-Presse LISBON, Portugal (AFP) — Safeguarding the world’s oceans will be fundamental to tackling global warming, US climate envoy John Kerry told AFP on Tuesday, warning that war in Ukraine and its economic fallout meant efforts to curb dangerous carbon pollution were facing “powerful headwinds”. The interview, on the margins of the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, has been edited for length. Q. This meeting has no negotiating agenda. How will […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) – An International Atomic Energy Agency taskforce began a mission Monday in Japan to review the controversial planned release of treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean. More than a million tonnes of processed water has accumulated in tanks at the crippled plant since it went into meltdown following a tsunami in 2011 and storage space is running out. An extensive pumping and filtration system removes most radioactive elements, […]
