QMS & EMS London

British Prime Minister David Cameron's government announced the creation of the world’s largest contiguous ocean reserve on Wednesday, setting aside 322,000 square miles (830,000 square kilometres) around the remote Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific for special protection. The new reserve is nearly three and a half times bigger than the landmass of the United Kingdom—larger than the state of California—and is home to a stunning array of sharks, fish, corals, and other marine life, says Enric Sala, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence who led a five-week Pristine Seas expedition to the island group in March 2012 that helped establish a scientific case for the reserve.

A volcano the size of New Mexico or the British Isles has been identified under the Pacific Ocean, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) east of Japan, making it the biggest volcano on Earth and one of the biggest in the solar system. The structure topples the previous largest on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Tamu Massif is a rounded dome that measures about 280 by 400 miles (450 by 650 kilometers), or more than 100,000 square miles. Its top lies about 6,500 feet (about 2,000 meters) below the ocean surface, while the base extends down to about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) deep. Tamu Massif dwarfs the largest active volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, which measures about 2,000 square miles (5,200 square kilometers).

Safe thresholds of ozone pollution were breached at 25% of air quality monitoring stations across the bloc in July, according to preliminary data collated by the agency. Under EU air quality rules, member states have to inform the EEA if levels of ozone (O3) rise above 180 micrograms (µg) per cubic metre of air – the level at which there is a risk to some sections of the population from even a brief exposure.

Scientists are taking the public with them to study the world's coral reefs, thanks to 360 degree panoramas from Google's underwater street-view format. Results from this pioneering project (which will allow ecologists to harness people power to discover how coral reefs are responding to climate change) will be presented at INTECOL, the world's largest international ecology meeting, in London this week. Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland leads the research associated with the Catlin Seaview Survey. The Survey uses image recognition technology to automatically assess creatures on the seabed; so far it has already taken hundreds of thousands of images on the Great Barrier Reef and in the Caribbean.

"Geoengineering is large-scale intervention in the Earth system to counteract human-induced climate change. There are two main types of geoengineering approaches: Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and Solar radiation management (SRM)." — University Of Exeter: Climate Change & Sustainable Futures. In 2009, a Royal Society report warned that geoengineering was not an alternative to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but conceded the technology might be needed in the event of a climate emergency.