Scientific Ocean Drilling in the news

The Nankai subduction zone in southwest Japan has produced multiple M8+ earthquakes over the past 300 years, including the 1707 M8.7 Hōei earthquake, the 1944 M8.1 Tōnankai earthquake, and the 1946 M8.1 Nankaidō earthquake.

Rock samples collected from the depths of the South Atlantic Ocean, dating back approximately 60 million years, have provided crucial insights into how significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) can remain sequestered over extensive periods. Researchers have discovered that CO2 is effectively trapped in layers of lava rubble known as breccia that accumulate on the ocean floor.

Sixty-million-year-old rock samples from deep under the ocean have revealed how huge amounts of carbon dioxide are stored for millennia in piles of lava rubble that accumulate on the seafloor. Scientists have analysed lavas drilled from deep under the South Atlantic Ocean to understand how much CO 2 is captured within the rocks due to reactions between the rocks and ocean.

On the floor of the South Atlantic, a 61 million year old pile of broken lava is quietly drinking carbon from the sea. In a study published in Nature Geoscience, a team led by the University of Southampton shows that rubble left behind by collapsing seafloor mountains can lock away seawater derived carbon dioxide for tens of millions of years.

For nearly 400 years, the vast underwater landmass known today as Zealandia went largely unnoticed—hidden in plain sight beneath the Pacific Ocean. In 2017, a team of geologists stunned the global scientific community by formally declaring Zealandia a continent.

Pair the words “summer” and “ocean,” and most people would picture a day spent sunning, swimming, and relaxing on the beach. For Arden Thompson ’27, an environmental resources major at Hofstra University, those words hearken back to an exciting learning opportunity she had earlier this year.

The ocean has a long memory, written in water and preserved in sediments deep under the sea floor. Understanding how ancient seas responded to conditions in the past is among our best guides for predicting future changes in the climate, explained Halima Ibrahim, a doctoral candidate in geological sciences who served as a shipboard sedimentologist during the International Ocean Discovery Program’s 2023 expedition off the coast of Iceland.

A Swansea University volcanologist is set to explore one of Earth’s most mysterious underwater landscapes as part of a groundbreaking international expedition off the coast of Japan.

Pair the words “summer” and “ocean,” and most people would picture a day spent sunning, swimming, and relaxing on the beach. For Arden Thompson ’27, an environmental resources major at Hofstra University, those words hearken back to an exciting learning opportunity she had earlier this year.

The ocean has a long memory, written in water and preserved in sediments deep under the sea floor. Understanding how ancient seas responded to conditions in the past is among our best guides for predicting future changes in the climate, explained Halima Ibrahim, a doctoral candidate in geological sciences who served as a shipboard sedimentologist during the International Ocean Discovery Program’s 2023 expedition off the coast of Iceland.