Paleoceanography is the scientific study of past ocean states, processes, and variability on geological timescales, using physical, chemical, biological, and isotopic proxies preserved in marine sediments, microfossils, corals, and other archives. It reconstructs parameters such as sea-surface and deep-water temperatures, salinity, circulation patterns, biogeochemical cycles, ice volume, and sea level, often through analyses of stable and radiogenic isotopes, trace metals, and sedimentological characteristics. Paleoceanography is central to understanding ocean–climate feedbacks, carbon cycle dynamics, and the response of the ocean system to external forcings, and it provides critical boundary conditions and validation targets for climate and Earth system models.
A new study published by researchers at the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa sheds light on the critical role of iron in Earth's climate history, revealing how its sources in the South Pacific Ocean have shifted over the ...
Environment
Aug 23, 2025
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58
Using geochemical analyses of marine sediments, researchers have been able to quantitatively reconstruct the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation over the past 12,000 years. The international research team, led by ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 14, 2025
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220
The murky world at the bottom of the oceans is now a little clearer, thanks to a new study that tracks the evolution of marine sediment layers across hundreds of millions of years.
Earth Sciences
Aug 11, 2025
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74
A recent study in Nature Geoscience offers important new insights into the hidden role of ancient groundwater beneath the ocean floor—and how it may have interacted with ice sheets and rising sea levels during past climate ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 6, 2025
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22
White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) almost went bottom-up during the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower than they are today and sharks had to get by with less space. The most recent cold snap ended about 10,000 ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 5, 2025
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488
An international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain, has investigated how marine ecosystems responded to past episodes of ocean deoxygenation. ...
Ecology
Jul 31, 2025
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33
In the first and only reconstruction of ocean pH ever carried out, new research from the University of St Andrews and the University of Birmingham has discovered that a rapid acidification of oceans, due to a massive and ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 14, 2025
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64
A new study reveals a bright spot for shellfish populations in the northeast Pacific Ocean. Combining paleontological tools and archaeological data with conservation research, the paper finds that, for the past 3,000 years, ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 9, 2025
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50
For years, scientists have debated whether a giant thick ice shelf once covered the entire Arctic Ocean during the coldest ice ages. Now, a new study published in Science Advances challenges this idea as the research team ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 4, 2025
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84
A study of 7000-year-old exposed coral reef fossils reveals how human fishing has transformed Caribbean reef food webs: as sharks declined by 75% and fish preferred by humans became smaller, prey fish species flourished—doubling ...
Ecology
Jul 1, 2025
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59
