News Archive

May 24, 2018 — Researchers from University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Arizona State University found that if a car is parked in the sun on a summer day, the interior temperature can reach 116 degrees F. and the dashboard may exceed 165 degrees F. in approximately one hour — the time it can take for a young child trapped in a car to suffer fatal injuries.

May 23, 2018 — A B-24 D-1 bomber associated with 11 American servicemen missing in action from World War II was recently found and documented in Hansa Bay off Papua New Guinea by Project Recover—a collaborative team of marine scientists, archaeologists and volunteers who have combined efforts to locate aircraft associated with MIAs from WWII.

April 4, 2018 — Researchers including Greg Rouse, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, selected Scripps founding benefactor Ellen Browning Scripps as the namesake of a newly described millimeter-long marine worm found in La Jolla. The team described the species Trilobodrilus ellenscrippsae in the European Journal of Taxonomy issue released April 3.

February 12, 2018 — Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego are using underwater microphones to interpret and characterize the calls of blue whales swimming through Southern California’s oceans, revealing new insights into the behavior of these endangered marine mammals.

February 5, 2018 — The Sun might emit less radiation by mid-century, giving planet Earth a chance to warm a bit more slowly but not halt the trend of human-induced climate change. The cooldown would be the result of what scientists call a grand minimum, a periodic event during which the Sun’s magnetism diminishes, sunspots form infrequently, and less ultraviolet radiation makes it to the surface of the planet. Scientists believe that the event is triggered at irregular intervals by random fluctuations related to the Sun’s magnetic field. A team of scientists led by research physicist Dan Lubin at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego has created for the first time an estimate of how much dimmer the Sun should be when the next minimum takes place.

January 31, 2018 — Sea urchin is a delicacy in Asia, South America, Europe, and increasingly in California, where the uniquely flavored roe, or uni, is used in sushi, gourmet cuisine, and products such as sauces and flavorings. But the large red sea urchin (Mesocentrotus franciscanus) caught off the coast of Southern California—the primary urchin fishery in the U.S.—is vulnerable to increased water temperatures and ocean acidification.

January 23, 2018 — On Jan. 23, the County of San Diego Board of Supervisors voted to approve an investment in technology developed at the University of California San Diego that will improve the County’s fire detection and response capabilities. The County unanimously approved $437,174 to make critical upgrades to the High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) and Alert Wildfire network, operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego.

January 17, 2018 — Dean Roemmich, a distinguished professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, will receive the 2018 Alexander Agassiz Medal from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

January 8, 2018 — A new study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography reveals that strong El Niño events can cause significant ice loss in some Antarctic ice shelves.

January 4, 2018 — In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as Earth warms.