What's in the news?

• Envisat making first direct measurements of ocean surface velocities  -  For more than a decade space-based radar instruments have been routinely observing ocean surface phenomena including wind, waves, oil slicks, even the eyes of hurricanes. Now - employing the same principle as police speed guns - satellite radar has also begun to enable direct measurements of the speed of the moving ocean surface itself.  (Reported by ESA on 2006-03-27 | Added 2006-03-29)
• Dead zones might masculinize fish  -  In oxygen-starved water, females look and act like males.  (Reported by ACS on 2006-03-29 | Added 2006-03-29)
• Scientists discover interplay between genes and viruses in tiny ocean plankton  -  New evidence from open-sea experiments shows there's a constant shuffling of genetic material going on among the ocean's tiny plankton. It happens via ocean-dwelling viruses, scientists report this week in the journal Science.  (Reported by NSF on 2006-03-23 | Added 2006-03-29)
• Grammar revealed in a whale's love song  -  Fresh mathematical analysis of the song shows there are complex grammatical rules. Using syntax, the whales combine sounds into phrases, which they further weave into hours-long melodies packed with information.  (Reported by MSNBC on 2006-03-22 | Added 2006-03-23)
• NASA study links "smog" to Arctic warming  -  In a global assessment of the impact of ozone on climate warming, scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York, evaluated how ozone in the lowest part of the atmosphere changed temperatures over the past 100 years. Using the best available estimates of global emissions of gases that produce ozone, the GISS computer model study reveals how much this single air pollutant, and greenhouse gas, has contributed to warming in specific regions of the world.  (Reported by NASA on 2006-03-14 | Added 2006-03-29)
• Bering Sea Ecosystem responding to changes in Arctic climate  -  Physical changes--including rising air and seawater temperatures and decreasing seasonal ice cover--appear to be the cause of a series of biological changes in the northern Bering Sea ecosystem that could have long-range and irreversible effects on the animals that live there and on the people who depend on them for their livelihoods.  (Reported by on 2006-03-09 | Added 2006-03-29)
• Japan grapples with invasion of giant jellyfish  -  Vast numbers of Echizen kurage, or Nomura's jellyfish, have appeared around Japan's coast since July, clogging and ripping fishing nets and forcing fishermen to spend hours hacking them apart before bringing home their reduced catches.  (Reported 2006-01-20 | Added 2006-02-01)
• Arctic Ocean ice surges onto Alaskan shore  -  Ridges of sea ice packing car-sized chunk of the cold stuff slammed onto a road in this northern Alaskan town in quantities not seen in nearly three decades.  (Reported 2006-01-28 | Added 2006-02-01)
• Tsunami warning centers in Pacific to go on 24/7 staffing  -  A portion of $24 million appropriated by Congress in May to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will allow 24-hour staffing, seven days a week at the nation's two tsunami warning centers.  (Reported 2006-01-21 | Added 2006-02-01)
• Beluga whale numbers remain flat in Alaska  -  A survey of beluga whales in Cook Inlet finds that numbers remain stagnant and could be declining despite a lengthy effort to get the white whales to rebound.  (Reported 2006-01-20 | Added 2006-02-01)
• Plows, plagues, and petroleum: how humans took control of climate  -  William Ruddiman's new book argues that humans have actually been changing the climate for some 8,000 years -- as a result of the earlier discovery of agriculture.  (Reported 2005-11-29 | Added 2006-01-23)
• Orca pods on the move  -  K and L pods, the two groups of orcas that leave Puget Sound each winter, may be timing their travels in a more traditional way this year. That is, they may have departed from inland waters in December rather than waiting for the new year, as they have for the past five years. Prior to 1999, they were almost always gone before January.  (Reported 2006-01-11 | Added 2006-01-11)
• Fisherman say chinook salmon are smaller  -  Tanana fisherman Charlie Campbell doesn't need scientific studies or empirical data to prove Yukon River chinook salmon - the mighty king of the species - are getting smaller. All he has to do is walk into his smokehouse.  (Reported 2006-01-06 | Added 2006-01-11)
• Scientist spotted birds' warning (Cooper Island, Alaska)  -  Every summer for the past 30 years, scientist George Divoky has studied a colony of seabirds called guillemots.  (Reported 2006-01-01 | Added 2006-01-11)
• Underwater listening devices yield discoveries about endangered large whales  -  Why whales emit their characteristic calls remains largely a biological mystery, but listening for the distinctive underwater sounds provides a valuable way to track the movements of endangered large whales. Autonomous data-recording devices equipped with hydrophones (underwater microphones), deployed in remote waters off Alaska, have been used in recent years to track seasonal occurrences of blue, fin, humpback, North Pacific right, bowhead, and sperm whales.  (Reported 2006-01-02 | Added 2006-01-11)

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