Topic: Education

Each year, billions of pounds of trash and other pollutants enter the ocean. Where does this pollution come from? Where does it go? Some of the debris ends up on our beaches, washed in with the waves and tides. Some debris sinks, some is eaten by marine animals that mistake it for food, and some accumulates in ocean gyres. Other forms of pollution that impact the health of the ocean come from sources like oil spills or from accumulation of many dispersed sources, such as fertilizer from our yards.

Want to climb the tallest mountain on Earth from its base to its peak? First you will need to get into a deep ocean submersible and dive almost 4 miles under the surface of the Pacific Ocean to the sea floor. 

Ocean water is on the move, affecting your climate, your local ecosystem, and the seafood that you eat. Ocean currents, abiotic features of the environment, are continuous and directed movements of ocean water. These currents are on the ocean’s surface and in its depths, flowing both locally and globally.

The water cycle is often taught as a simple circular cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Although this can be a useful model, the reality is much more complicated. The paths and influences of water through Earth’s ecosystems are extremely complex and not completely understood. NOAA is striving to expand understanding of the water cycle at global to local scales to improve our ability to forecast weather, climate, water resources, and ecosystem health.

In the 200-plus years since the industrial revolution began, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere has increased due to human actions. During this time, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. This might not sound like much, but the pH scale is logarithmic, so this change represents approximately a 30 percent increase in acidity.

The Great Lakes system offsite link includes five large lakes, one small lake, four connecting channels, and the St. Lawrence Seaway. The large lakes are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. They hold about 90% of the freshwater in the United States and approximately 20% of the world's freshwater supply. Forty million residents of the United States and Canada depend on this system for clean drinking water.

Food webs describe who eats whom in an ecological community. Made of interconnected food chains, food webs help us understand how changes to ecosystems — say, removing a top predator or adding nutrients — affect many different species, both directly and indirectly.

Phytoplankton and algae form the bases of aquatic food webs. They are eaten by primary consumers like zooplankton, small fish, and crustaceans. Primary consumers are in turn eaten by fish, small sharks, corals, and baleen whales. Top ocean predators include large sharks, billfish, dolphins, toothed whales, and large seals. Humans consume aquatic life from every section of this food web.

By influencing global temperatures and precipitation, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) significantly impacts Earth’s ecosystems and human societies. El Niño and La Niña are opposite extremes of the ENSO, which refers to cyclical environmental conditions that occur across the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. These changes are due to natural interactions between the ocean and atmosphere. Sea surface temperature, rainfall, air pressure, atmospheric and ocean circulation all influence each other. 

Carbon is the chemical backbone of life on Earth. Carbon compounds regulate the Earth’s temperature, make up the food that sustains us, and provide energy that fuels our global economy.