Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Also with us is Dan Kahan.

He's a climate science researcher with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Dan, welcome to Midday Edition.

Hi, thanks.

We're going to have to leave it there and pick that conversation up another time.

I've been speaking with Dan Kahan.

He's a climate scientist researcher with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Dan, thanks for being here.

But that's when we started to see some really good science come out.

There was a paper from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography titled When Will Lake Mead Go Dry? That was a bombshell paper, and it really changed the conversation around Colorado river management.

Nowadays, if you look at where Powell and Mead are today, their combined storage has not been this low since 1957.

So we're in a situation where we have way too much storage.

So one of the commissioners actually participated in the original MPA designation process working for an environmental NGO at the time.

She now runs one of the master's programs at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

So she very much understands the nuance and the dynamics of ocean management.

I think she even wrote a chapter in a book on ocean policy.

While the AEC's oceanographic research budgets have not been large, they have contributed materially to knowledge of the oceanic environment.

AEC-sponsored research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography has determined by a process known as neutron activation analysis that the concentration of rare earth elements in Pacific Ocean waters appears to be only about one hundredth of the level previously reported.

by analysis of naturally occurring radioisotopes they have also discovered that it takes from one million to a hundred million years for lithium potassium barium strontium and similar elements introduced into the ocean from rivers to be deposited in the bottom sediments Aluminum, iron, and titanium are deposited in from 100 to 1,000 years.

They have also found that sedimentation occurs in the South Pacific at a rate of from 0.3 to 0.6 mm per 1,000 years, in the North Pacific at a rate several times that figure, and in the basins on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at a rate of several mm per 1,000 years.

The diffusion was observed, sampled, and compared with existing diffusion theory.

Mathematical models have been developed that can now be used to predict the rate and extent of diffusion in the Cape Kennedy area in the event of any radioactivity release from aborted test flights.

Similar studies have been carried out near the Space Launching Site at Point Arguello, California, by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

These included collection of data on dispersion, marine sediments, and the biological uptake of radioactive plutonium, polonium, cesium, and strontium.

While the AEC's oceanographic research budgets have not been large, they have contributed materially to knowledge of the oceanic environment.

AEC-sponsored research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography has determined by a process known as neutron activation analysis that the concentration of rare earth elements in Pacific Ocean waters appears to be only about one hundredth of the level previously reported.

By analysis of naturally occurring radioisotopes, they have also discovered that it takes from 1 million to 100 million years for lithium, potassium, barium, strontium, and similar elements introduced into the ocean from rivers to be deposited in the bottom sediments.

Aluminum, iron, and titanium are deposited in from 100 to 1,000 years.

And in shore locations, the diffusion was observed, sampled, and compared with existing diffusion theory.

Mathematical models have been developed that can now be used to predict the rate and extent of diffusion in the Cape Kennedy area in the event of any radioactivity release from aborted test flights.

Similar studies have been carried out near the space launching site at Point Arguello, California, by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

These included collection of data on dispersion, marine sediment, and the biological uptake of radioactive plutonium, polonium, cesium, and strontium.

Air archives exist.

The Scripps Institution has a collection of air samples going back decades.

They're sealed in glass flasks and stored for exactly this purpose.

The problem is that nobody thought to start doing it 2,000 years ago.