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The causes of coastal flooding in the Maldives are more complex than previously thought, according to a new study from the University of Southampton.

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered six new animal species in undersea hot springs 2.8 kilometres deep in the southwest Indian Ocean.

Floating lab drills 1.5km below sea floor to study megaquakes.

Floating lab drills 1.5km below sea floor to study megaquakes.

African countries aren't doing enough to prepare for rising sea levels.

The first miniature sensors designed to measure saltiness and temperature across the world's oceans will be put in use later this week on an ambitious expedition.

Researchers use 'biological passport' to monitor Earth's largest fish.

Key areas of the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and the Pacific should be designated protected areas in order to safeguard vulnerable coastal communities' livelihoods, new research published this week reveals.

A new project focussing on Sustainable Oceans, Livelihoods and food Security Through Increased Capacity in Ecosystem research (SOLSTICE), aims to strengthen the ability of the nine Western Indian Ocean nations to address the challenges of sustainable management of marine resources.

Researchers drill deep to understand why the Sumatra earthquake was so severe.

A community engagement programme in East Africa led by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has demonstrated how marine robots have the potential to transform ocean research for developing nations, offering a viable alternative to expensive research infrastructure, such as ships.

Coastal upwelling is an oceanographic process that brings cold, nutrient-rich waters to the ocean surface from depth. These nutrient-rich waters help drive primary productivity which forms the foundation of ecological systems and the fisheries dependent on them. Although coastal upwelling systems of the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) are seasonal (i.e., only present for part of the year) with large variability driving strong fluctuations in fish catch, they sustain food security and livelihoods for millions of people via small-scale (subsistence and artisanal) fisheries. Due to the socio-economic importance of these systems, an "Upwelling Watch" analysis is proposed, for producing updates/alerts on upwelling presence and extremes. We propose a methodology for the detection of coastal upwelling using remotely-sensed daily chlorophyll-a and Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data. An unsupervised machine learning approach, K-means clustering, is used to detect upwelling areas off the Somali coast (WIO), where the Somali upwelling - regarded as the largest in the WIO and the fifth most important upwelling system globally - takes place. This automatic detection approach successfully delineates the upwelling core and surrounds, as well as non-upwelling ocean regions. The technique is shown to be robust with accurate classification of out-of-sample data (i.e., data not used for training the detection model). Once upwelling regions have been identified, the classification of extreme upwelling events was performed using confidence intervals derived from the full remote sensing record. This work has shown promise within the Somali upwelling system with aims to expand it to the rest of the WIO upwellings. This upwelling detection and classification method can aid fisheries management and also provide broader scientific insights into the functioning of these important oceanographic features.

The effect of tides on the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) is explored in a regional ocean model of South East Asia. Our model simulations, with and without tidal forcing, reveal that tides drive only a modest increase in the ITF volume, heat and salt transports toward the Indian Ocean. However, tides drive large regional changes in these transports through Lombok Strait, Ombai Strait and the Timor Sea, and regulate the partitioning of the ITF amongst them. The effect of tidal mixing on the salinity and temperature profiles within the Indonesian Seas drives a small decrease in the heat and salt transports toward the Indian Ocean in all three exit passages. In contrast, the tidal residual circulation due to the interaction between the tides and the topography and stratification (including the effects of tidal mixing on the circulation) leads to a large decrease in the transports toward the Indian Ocean through the Lombok and Ombai straits, but a large increase through the Timor Sea. Hence, the small net contribution from tides to the ITF's volume, heat and salt transports is due to a compensation between large, but opposing tidal residual transports at the combined Lombok and Ombai straits and in the Timor Sea. Our results indicate that explicit representation of tides, often missing in Earth system models, is necessary to accurately capture the ITF's pathway and so the tracer transport from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean.