With a focus on science that serves society, NOAA scientists made new discoveries, collected valuable data, and provided information throughout 2012 to guide policymakers’ decisions. Here are some of NOAA Research’s top accomplishments of 2012.
|
French Polynesia and the Cook Islands this month created adjacent shark sanctuaries spanning 2.5 million square miles of ocean, a move that reflects a growing trend to protect sharks worldwide and more than doubles the area now off-limits to any shark fishing. Read more about what this means and why its important for ocean ecosystems.
For decades, a source of powerful earthquakes and volcanic activity on the Pacific Rim was shrouded in secrecy, as the Soviet government kept outsiders away from what is now referred to as the Russian Far East. But research in the last 20 years has shown that the Kamchatka Peninsula and Kuril Islands are a seismic and volcanic hotbed, with a potential to trigger tsunamis that pose a risk to the rest of the Pacific Basin. Read some of the details about this issue here. An environmental entrepreneur whose plan to dump iron in a patch of the Pacific Ocean was shelved four years ago after a scientific outcry has gone ahead with a similar experiment without any academic or government oversight, startling and unnerving marine researchers. Read more here! The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a record low Monday, according to the University of Colorado National Snow and Ice Data Center, and is on track to decline further in the next two weeks. Read more about this here. The March 11, 2011, Japan tsunami generated about 3 petajoules of energy, according to a new NOAA study. That’s enough to power New York City for seven days or the entire country of Canada for about two and a half hours, they estimate. The study, the first to estimate total energy of a tsunami from measurements made in real time during the tsunami propagation, was published earlier this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans. Read more about this here. |
 |
|
|
College of the Environment | Log in | Privacy | Terms | Copyright © 2013 University of Washington Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||
Follow CoEnv
By EVOPL payday loan