Gulf of America - NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory

NOAA cruises set the foundation for restoring crucial Florida ecosystems

AOML Communications — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 19:45:40 +0000

South Florida is comprised of 350 miles of the only barrier coral reef in North America – and the third largest in the world. 1,800 miles of shoreline is lined with mangroves in the Florida Keys alone, which provide coastal protection from storms and support juveniles of commercialized fish species. The region sustains the largest […]

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New study suggests eddies may influence coral resilience as ocean temperatures rise

AOML Communications — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 15:09:16 +0000

A new study spanning two decades of research may indicate a series of reefs from the surface to 150 meters deep in the Gulf of America are more resilient to warmer oceans as they are exposed to a wider range of temperatures brought on by a physical movement of seawater called “eddies.”

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Extreme climate event in North Atlantic may have kicked off Sargassum explosion a decade ago

AOML Communications — Mon, 01 May 2023 19:13:03 +0000

When massive mounds of golden-brown seaweed began piling up on beaches throughout the Caribbean and West Africa in summer of 2011, the question of where it came from probably mattered less to residents and businesses than how they were going to get rid of it. Certainly, few would have connected the Sargassum seaweed invasion to the extremely snowy 2010-11 winter in the eastern United States. But according to a hypothesis proposed by a team of NOAA AOML-led scientists in 2020, the two phenomena share an origin story: an extremely strong and long-lasting shift of the North Atlantic Oscillation into its negative phase back in 2010.

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Massive bloom of seaweed in tropical Atlantic raises the risk for Caribbean, Gulf, and Florida beach impacts in coming months

AOML Communications — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 15:03:00 +0000

Earlier this year, ocean scientists raised an alert about the large amount of seaweed drifting in the tropical Atlantic this spring. Experts warned that the region’s annual spring bloom of Sargassum—a free-floating brown macroalgae from the North Atlantic that suddenly appeared in large quantities in the tropics in 2011— was the densest observed in March since scientists began tracking the phenomenon with satellite images twenty years ago. Excessive amounts of Sargassum raise the chances that large mats will break free from the prevailing currents and wash ashore later this spring and summer in the Caribbean, Gulf of America, and around Florida.

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Eddies in the Caribbean Sea Influence the Prediction of the Loop Current in the Gulf of America

AOML Communications — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 21:15:08 +0000

A recent study by scientists at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) in collaboration with partners at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science used a numerical modeling approach to investigate the impact of the eddy field in the Caribbean Sea on Loop Current predictions downstream in the Gulf of America. They found that eddy activity in the Caribbean Sea is crucial for the accurate prediction of eddy shedding by the Loop Current.

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Scientists participate in Ocean Acidification Annual Community Meetings in San Diego, California

AOML Communications — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 16:25:42 +0000

Scientists from NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), and our cooperative institute partners, the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Studies and the Northern Gulf Institute, recently participated in Ocean Acidification Annual Community Meetings at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, California. Over the course of multiple days, scientists attended various meetings on ocean acidification research topics, visited laboratories, met with fellow scientists, learned about new ocean acidification technologies, and much more.

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River Runoff Creates a Buffer Zone for Ocean Acidification in the Gulf of America

AOML Communications — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 20:19:37 +0000

A new study by scientists at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and Northern Gulf Institute (NGI) has revealed the alkalinity of river runoff to be a crucial factor for slowing the pace of ocean acidification along the Gulf of America’s northern coast. This valuable, first-time finding may be indicative of ocean carbon chemistry patterns for other U.S. coastal areas significantly connected to rivers.

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