""By 2016, nearly as much radiation from the Fukushima disaster will have reached the North American West Coast as was initially scattered over Japan during the nuclear explosions, according to professor Michio Aoyama of Japan's Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity.
In March 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered multiple nuclear meltdowns at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. A massive cloud of radiation was ejected into the atmosphere, settling all across Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.
Approximately 800 terabecquerels' worth of cesium-137 (Cs-137) alone is expected to reach North America by next year, accounting for just 5 percent of the Cs-137 spilled into the ocean as a result of the disaster.
Radioactivity already arriving
Radioactive cesium does not naturally occur on planet Earth and is found only as a result of human nuclear activities. Cs-137 is widely considered one of the most dangerous byproducts of nuclear activity, because it mimics the activity of potassium and therefore accumulates in soil and plants, and is actively taken up by the human body.
Aoyama says that approximately 3,500 terabecquerels' worth of Cs-137 have been released into the sea from the Fukushima plant since March 2011, plus an additional 1.2 to 1.5 terabecquerels that was first released into the air but later fell into the sea. Based on measurements of the pace at which the Cs-137 has been moving eastward, Aoyama recently calculated that 800 terabecquerels would reach the West Coast of North America by next year.
Notably, 800 terabecquerels is nearly as much as (80 percent of) the 1,000 terabequerels that Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power Company says fell over Japan following the disaster.
In April, researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution announced that they had detected traces of Cs-134 in waters collected at the shores of Vancouver Island. Because this isotope has a half-life of only two years, the only likely source of this contamination is from the Fukushima disaster.
Based on this and other studies, Aoyama said that the 800 terabecquerels he has predicted might already have arrived at North American shores.""
""Media outlets are widely reporting on two recent studies in the journal Geophysical Research Letters describing a giant "blob" of warm water that may be responsible for recent ecological and weather anomalies across the United States -- from California's drought to the East Coast's severe winter to the thousands of dying sea lions washing up along the West Coast.
The "blob" -- more precisely, the "warm anomaly" -- is a patch of ocean water just off the coast of the Pacific Northwest that is about 1,000 miles across, 300 feet deep, and 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than usual. It received its nickname from Nick Bond of Washington State University, lead author of one of the new studies.
Do the new studies actually explain what the media are claiming? Are there potential explanations that are being ignored?
What did the studies find?
Already, researchers have linked the blob to many of this past year's alarming ecological occurrences. Warmer water is less rich in nutrients, which scientists say has caused effects including a crash in the population of copepods (tiny animals that form the base of the ocean's food web) and the starvation of sea lion pups, causing thousands of the animals to strand themselves onshore. The warm water has also caused tropical fish to appear near Seattle.
The new study by Bond and colleagues also links the blob to the recent weather disturbances. The researchers claim that the blob actually has an atmospheric cause: an unseasonal ridge of high-pressure air hovering above it. This high-pressure air (instead of the low-pressure air typical for the winter) has been associated with the ocean becoming unseasonably calm and warm, removing a major source of rain for the West Coast and contributing to California's drought and the West Coast's warmer-than-usual winter, according to the researchers.
The second study traced the blob to another patch of unseasonably warm water, this one in the Tropics near the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line. This warm water has been heating up the air above it, directly leading to the unseasonably warm patch of air that is heating the waters off the U.S. coast.
"It's like throwing a rock into a pond," researcher Dennis Hartmann said. "The wave eventually makes its way to the other side."
This same wave of warm air actually crosses the entire North American continent, the researchers found, eventually causing a wet, low-pressure system over the central and eastern United States. This system, called a "North Pacific Mode," contributed to this year's remarkably cold and snowy winter, the researchers claim.
Although North Pacific Modes have been observed before, this past year's was more extreme and longer lasting than has been seen before.
Potential Fukushima link not being investigated
According to media reports, no one knows what has caused the unusually warm Tropical waters responsible for all of these climate and ecological effects. But some have asked whether radioactive material emitted into the ocean by the Fukushima disaster might not be partially responsible.""
