The amount of phytoplankton - tiny marine plants - in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century, research suggests. Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say the decline appears to be linked to rising water temperatures.
They made their finding by looking at records of the transparency of sea water, which is affected by the plants.
Plankton decline across oceans as waters warm
Met Office report: global warming evidence is 'unmistakable'
A new climate change report from the Met Office and its US equivalent has provided the "greatest evidence we have ever had" that the world is warming. The report brings together the latest temperature readings from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean
Usually scientists rely on the temperature over land, taken from weather stations around the world for the last 150 years, to show global warming. But climate change sceptics questioned the evidence, especially in the wake of recent scandals like "climategate".
EPA releases data on local toxics
As part of the Obama Administration’s continuing commitment to open government, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published the latest data on industrial releases and transfers of toxic chemicals in the United States between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2009.
EPA is making the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data available within weeks of the reporting deadline through its Web site and in the popular tools, TRI Explorer and Envirofacts. The database contains environmental release and transfer data on nearly 650 chemicals and chemical categories reported to EPA by more than 21,000 industrial and other facilities.
Is Weed Killer in Drinking Water Dangerous? Govt. Is Letting the Chemical Industry Come Up with the Answer
Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide’s health risks, records of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show. Many of these industry-funded studies, which largely support atrazine’s safety, have never been published or subjected to an independent scientific peer review.
Israelis dump toxic waste over vital water supply for the region
An Israeli company - The Ma'ale Adumim Planning and Development Company Ltd has been managing the Abu Dis landfill, near the neighborhood of Abu Dis, since 1998. The site receives waste from Jerusalem and the surrounding localities. The 430-dunam site receives huge amounts of waste every day, from Jerusalem, Ma'ale Adumim and the surrounding localities. This same company is also vigorously selling off industrial land development which also sits over the top of the water aquifers that are so vital to the region. The combination of the landfill site and industrial development over such a precious resource will have devastating effects on the population. When both landfill waste and industrial run off are added together the toxic plumes that radiate out from such locations will not only contaminate the public water supply but will also eventually be picked up by submersible pumps that water vast tracts of agricultural land.
Researchers confirm subsea Gulf oil plumes are from BP well
Through a chemical fingerprinting process, University of South Florida researchers have definitively linked clouds of underwater oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well — the first direct scientific link between the subsurface oil clouds commonly known as "plumes" and the BP oil spill, USF officials said Friday.
Until now, scientists had circumstantial evidence, but lacked that definitive scientific link.
Oil trader fined over toxic waste
A Dutch court has fined an oil trading company $1.28m for exporting toxic waste to the Ivory Coast, and concealing the dangerous nature of the material. The judge hearing the case at Amsterdam district court on Friday said Trafigura had carried out what European regulations aimed to prevent: "Namely the export of waste to the Third World and harming the environment".
Frans Bauduin also convicted a Trafigura employee for his role in the 2006 incident and the Ukranian captain of the Probo Koala ship that carried the toxic waste.
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