Diatoms are a group of phytoplankton species responsible for ~ 25 % of primary production on Earth. Ocean acidification (OA) could influence diatoms but the key question is if they become more or less important within marine food webs. We synthesize OA experiments with natural communities and found that diatoms are more likely to be positively than negatively affected by high CO² and larger species may profit in particular. This has important implications for ecosystem services diatoms provide.

Methane seepage from the seafloor west of Svalbard was investigated with a fast-response membrane inlet laser spectrometer. The acquired data were in good agreement with traditional sparse discrete water sampling, subsequent gas chromatography, and with a new 2-D model based on echo-sounder data. However, the acquired high-resolution data revealed unprecedented details of the methane distribution, which highlights the need for high-resolution measurements for future climate studies.

In this study, we assessed the impacts of the world’s largest dam, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD), on tide–river dynamics and concluded that the strongest impacts occurred during autumn and winter due to the TGD's operation. The results obtained will hopefully enhance our understanding of the impacts of large-scale human interventions on estuarine hydrodynamics and guide effective and sustainable water management in the Yangtze River estuary and other estuaries with substantial freshwater discharge.

Use of CFCs as oceanic transient tracers is difficult for recently ventilated water masses as their atmospheric mole fractions have been decreasing. To explore novel tracers, we synthesized consistent annual mean atmospheric histories of HCFC-22, HCFC-141b, HCFC-142b, HFC-134a, HFC-125, HFC-23, PFC-14 (CF4) and PFC-116 in both hemispheres and reconstructed their solubility functions in water and seawater. This work is also potentially useful for tracer studies in a range of natural waters.

This paper describes a feasibility study carried out to determine if information gathered for one discipline could be repurposed to provide insight in another. Data gathered during a study of bird distribution were used to investigate whether these same data could be used to measure tidal current velocities and direction. The paper concludes that there is potential to use GPS-tagged birds as drifters of opportunity and that interdisciplinary sharing of data can provide additional insight.