Breaking Waves: Ocean News

11/10/2024 - 00:00
The region’s president responds to criticisms that he was slow to act by attacking the prime minister The sun still hadn’t risen on Tuesday 29 October when the mayor of Utiel, Ricardo Gabaldón, took another look at the warnings from Spain’s state meteorological office and ordered all the schools in the small Valencian town to close. “The warning early that morning – at 5am or 6am – was orange,” he said. “That’s when I was weighing up whether to close the schools here. In the end, I ordered them to close at six or seven that morning. Soon after, the alert went red.” Continue reading...
11/09/2024 - 15:50
Ten people have been injured so far by the Mountain fire, which was 17% contained by Saturday morning As firefighting crews continued to battle the Mountain fire on Saturday, some residents were allowed to return to areas destroyed by the blaze to sift through the destruction to their homes. As of 7am Pacific time on Saturday, the fire had been 17% contained, according to Cal Fire, the state’s wildfire-fighting agency. Continue reading...
11/09/2024 - 15:00
Shadow cabinet secretary Claire Coutinho accepted donation from Lord Bamford while overseeing millions awarded to his family businesses in green grants A Conservative former cabinet ­minister who took donations from the billionaire boss of the JCB digger dynasty – including a £7,000 trip on his VIP private helicopter – oversaw decisions to award his family’s business empire millions in taxpayer-funded green energy grants. Claire Coutinho also posed for ­pictures promoting Lord Bamford’s personal £100m hydrogen engine project and accepted a £7,500 donation from JCB to her local election campaign while she was the energy secretary in Rishi Sunak’s government. Continue reading...
11/07/2024 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 07 November 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00094-2 Urbanizing river deltas are highly susceptible to sea level rise and extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. Water-related disasters are already happening more often due to climate change, rapid urbanization, unsustainable land use and aging infrastructure threatening a large fraction of human and natural environments in these low lying and sinking areas around the globe. As stress levels of climate change are accelerating, societal and physical transformations are essential for adapting our deltas to climate change. In the Netherlands, imagination and evidence by design in the form of a long-term spatial vision, played a pivotal role in the past century to set, share and accomplish a new direction to overcome flood disasters by altering the coastlines and riverbeds of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. The unprecedented rainfall in July 2021 and the storm in December 2021 which hit Western Europe revealed the effectiveness of this new direction. We therefore plea for a prominent role of design in climate science and delta management to imagine, analyse and communicate future perspectives for climate adaptation in urbanizing deltas.
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023 Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program. World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html. Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs. World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world. World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org. media contact Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory   |   director@thew2o.net +12077011069
Read more »