In response to the Deepwater Horizion incident, NOAA’s Damage Assessment Remediation and Restoration Program continues to coordinate data collection efforts with natural resource trustees in five states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas), the Department of Interior (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management), and BP (the Responsible Party)....

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New research reveals that when two parts of the Earth's crust break apart, this does not always cause massive volcanic eruptions. The study explains why some parts of the world saw massive volcanic eruptions millions of years ago and others did not....

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A focus at the European Space Agency's Living Planet Symposium is on the innovative Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, which recently became operational. Early results are proving very encouraging with its first observations due to be released in early July....

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One proposed emergency fix for global warming is to seed clouds over the ocean to make them more reflective, reducing the solar radiation absorbed by the Earth. But the scheme could also change global rainfall patterns, raising concerns of water shortages on land. A new study suggests that the scheme could actually increase monsoonal rains and cause continents to become wetter, not drier, on average....

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The longest sequences of temperature and salinity data analyzed (from 1900 to present) have confirmed the gradual warming of the waters of the western Mediterranean, according to new research....

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Cyclical changes in atmospheric pressure and sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic Ocean affect drought in the Sahel region on the southern Sahara rim....

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The northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone, an underwater area with little or no oxygen known commonly as the "dead zone," could be larger than the recent average, according to a forecast by a team of NOAA-supported scientists....

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Researchers say this year's Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" is expected to be larger than average, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a $659 million fishery. The 2010 forecast, released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), calls for a Gulf dead zone of between 6,500 and 7,800 square miles, an area roughly the size of Lake Ontario....

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The ocean is a huge body of water that is constantly in motion. General patterns of ocean flow are called currents. Sometimes theses currents can pinch off sections and create circular currents of water called an eddy....

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A critical minimum for Arctic sea ice can again be expected for late summer 2010, according to new projections by researchers in Germany....

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