This Week in Water

Scientists find that the oceans are getting warmer more rapidly than their models anticipated.

Rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are causing rapid warming of the Earth's ocean surfaces, reducing their ability to absorb increased carbon emissions—that is, their ability to cool the planet.

Earth's oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate in 300 million years.

Cambridge University researchers believe the Greenland ice sheet is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates suggested. A complete melt would mean rising sea levels up to 7 meters, or 23+ feet.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is headed toward "unstoppable" collapse according to studies using visual data from the Europeans Space Agency.

Miami Beach, a particularly vulnerable low-lying U.S. city, is worried about its annual 'King Tide' which threatens to push an extra foot of water over sea walls and onto its streets.

More than 35,000 walruses were driven ashore in Alaska because of a loss of coastal sea ice, their normal habitat.

Some scientists believe whale poop can help reverse the effects of climate change. It's complicated.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii (full disclosure: my son is a student there in the school of oceanography) are trying to breed super-coral reefs which they believe may pre-empt excess acidification and warming of the oceans.

Scientists have revised and updated their maps of the undersea floor using satellite data, discovering many new mountains in the deepest parts of the ocean.

Scientists from MIT believe global warming could actually ease fresh water scarcity in some parts of the world, but the distribution could be unpredictable and uneven.

For the first time in modern history, the eastern basin of the South Aral Sea—once the world's fourth-largest lake—has completely dried.

Like California and other parts of the U.S. West, the Amazon regions of Brazil are facing unprecedented drought. Rivers there are drying up.

As in parts of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the Arabian sea has a dead zone from sewage and fertilizer flowing into it from local rivers. It's the size of Texas.

Meanwhile, hundreds died in India and Pakistan from the heaviest monsoon rains in 50 years.

Some of the water molecules in your drinking glass were created before the formation of our sun.

Astronomers have detected water vapor in the atmosphere of a planet in a solar system far, far away. This is a scientific first.