Category 5 storm is most powerful to strike Jamaica and has caused death and destruction in Cuba and Haiti
Hurricane Melissa has wreaked havoc across parts of the Caribbean in recent days, after first making landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday night as a category 5 storm – the highest strength. This was the most powerful storm to strike the island nation, packing winds of up to 185mph at its peak.
Western parts of Jamaica were worst hit, with 90% of homes in the town of Black River losing their roof or being destroyed entirely. Roughly three-quarters of the country lost electricity, with at least 19 people known to have lost their lives at the time of publication. The cleanup operation was hampered by thunderstorms even after Melissa cleared to the north. The hurricane continued northwards, but was a slightly weakened category 3 storm by the time it made landfall in Cuba. Nonetheless, the storm continued to bring winds of up to 120mph and torrential rains.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/31/2025 - 02:50
10/30/2025 - 23:43
Sydney, Brisbane and Darwin are predicted to hit hottest October in terms of maximum temperatures, the Bureau of Meteorology says
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Queensland and the Northern Territory are on track for their warmest October on record against “every measure”, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Across the country it had been a “pretty unusual month”, a senior climatologist at the BoM, Hugh McDowell, said.
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10/30/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 31 October 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00153-2
Distant-water fleets, local consequences: lessons from a case study in Liberia
10/30/2025 - 22:53
Separate incidents see bodies pulled from basements in Brooklyn and Manhattan as heavy rain closes roads and causes delays
Two people died in flooded New York City basements Thursday during a rainstorm that shut down roadways and caused airport delays, authorities said.
A scuba team recovered the body of a 39-year-old man after firefighters received a call of a person trapped in the flooded basement of a townhouse in Brooklyn at about 4.30pm, police said. A video posted online showed firefighters carrying the victim away through calf-deep water on the street.
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10/30/2025 - 19:54
Flooding that killed 10 people in central Vietnam this week turned streets in the historic town of Hoi An into canals on Thursday after a major river reached a 60-year high, authorities say. The Unesco heritage-listed town is among the country’s most popular tourist destinations
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10/30/2025 - 18:39
Sydney researchers commercialising a product they say can cool indoor spaces and will cost little more than standard premium paints
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Australian scientists have developed roof coatings that can passively cool surfaces up to 6C below ambient temperature, as well as extract water from the atmosphere, which they say could reduce indoor temperatures during extreme heat events.
Heatwaves are becoming more intense, more frequent and more deadly due to human-caused global heating.
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10/30/2025 - 12:52
‘It’s hard to fathom how a peaceful protester can receive more prison time than many of the insurrectionists,’ said one researcher, of Timothy Martin’s sentence
Climate activists have condemned an 18-month jail term for a nonviolent protester who vandalized a display case at the National Gallery of Art as “grossly disproportionate” and a violation of the constitutional protected rights to free speech and peaceful protest.
Timothy Martin, along with fellow activist Joanna Smith, staged the climate protest at the Washington DC gallery in April 2023, smearing washable red and black paint on the protective glass covering Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen Years sculpture.
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10/30/2025 - 09:55
Expanded climate action from cities and states could slash planet-heating pollution despite Trump working against it
Ahead of next month’s major United Nations climate talks in Brazil, Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency head, said US cities and states were keeping the climate fight alive despite an all-out assault from the Trump administration.
“We will not allow our country to become numb or debilitated by those who are standing in the way of progress,” she said on a press call early on Thursday.
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World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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