WEEKLY WATER NEWS

DataStreme WES Week Ten: 5-9 November 2007

Water in the News:

(Thurs.) New diving guide available for marine sanctuaries -- A printed guide and web page have been unveiled by the NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program with the intended purpose of increasing the safety and enhancing the experiences of scuba diving enthusiasts diving in the waters of the 13 national marine sanctuaries that are found along the country's coasts. [NOAA News]
(Thurs.) Marine debris education effort is launched -- NOAA, along with Department of the Interior, the US EPA, U.S. Coast Guard, and the Department of Transportation, recently launched "Marine Debris 101", an Internet-based national marine education program that is designed to increase public awareness of the growing problem of marine debris. This effort will involve a network of Coastal Ecosystem Learning Centers that include 20 aquariums, museums, and research facilities. [NOAA News]
(Thurs.) Forecasting Arizona thunderstorms may have been compromised by change in upper air station -- A former National Weather Service meteorologist and a research meteorologist at the University of Arizona claim that the recent change in where radiosondes are launched twice daily may have compromised the long-term records of low-level atmospheric humidity, thereby affecting the National Weather Service's ability to predict thunderstorm activity that develops as part of the Arizona summer monsoon pattern. [USA Today]
(Thurs.) Early oxygen-rich atmosphere is dated -- Geologists at Ohio State University, the University of California, Riverside and Penn State University have found evidence suggesting that an oxygen-rich atmosphere may have developed during the late Cambrian period (approximately 500 million years ago) as upheavals in the earth's crust may have cooled the world oceans sufficiently to allow for biodiversity with widespread giant plankton blooms that resulted in a burst of free oxygen into the atmosphere. [Ohio State University News]
(Tues.) Ancient waterworks unveiled -- An image generated from data collected by the Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) over a seven-year period over the Cambodian jungle in southeast Asia shows the outline of an ancient water supply system for Angkor, a capital city between the ninth and fifteenth centuries AD. [NASA Earth Observatory]
(Tues.) Drought causes a rise in anxiety across the Southeast -- The extreme to exceptional drought has become entrenched across the Southeast and has caused major water supply issues across the region that have resulted in a water war between three Southeastern States and nearly emptied Lake Lanier, the major reservoir for metropolitan Atlanta, GA. The drought has also caused increased anxiety levels of residents across the region as more municipal water districts place water restrictions to conserve the dwindling water supplies. [USA Today] Orme, a small town in southeast Tennessee, has effectively run out of water. [USA Today]
(Tues.) Water users in Idaho warned of potential summer water problems -- The director of Idaho's Department of Water Resources has mailed nearly 3000 groundwater users of the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer in southern Idaho and warned them that unless an above-average snowpack is put down this winter over the state's mountain ranges, water use may have to be curtailed during the 2008 growing season. [US Water News Online]
(Tues.) Protecting salmon from hydropower systems -- The NOAA Fisheries Service recently announced a series of actions that it is undertaking with the collaboration of states and tribes in the Northwest at protecting and recovering endangered salmon stocks by mitigating the effects of the Columbia Basin hydropower system and Upper Snake River irrigation projects. [NOAA News]
(Tues.) New way to make water is found -- Scientists at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana have developed a "oxygen reduction" process to create water using a hydrogen fuel cell technology. [EurekAlert!]
(Tues.) A top 10 list of endangered beach towns is named -- Geologists recently produced a list of what they considered the ten most endangered communities along the nation's North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico beaches. [National Geographic News]
(Tues.) Spit on the Baltic -- An image obtained from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite shows the Curonian (or Courland) Spit that lies in the southeastern Baltic Sea and separated from the coast of Lithuania and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast by the Curonian Lagoon. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has designated the Curonian Spit as a World Heritage site. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Eye on the Tropics --
- In the North Atlantic Basin, Hurricane Noel, the fifth hurricane of the 2007 hurricane season, developed from a tropical depression that formed over the Caribbean south of Hispaniola at the start of last week. Intensifying to a Tropical Storm, it moved northward across Hispaniola, then westward over Cuba before curving northward across the Bahamas, intensifying to hurricane north of the Bahamas at the end of last week. Moving to the north-northeast, it lost its tropical characteristics and became an extratropical storm as it took aim on New England and the Canadian Maritimes, where it hit over the weekend. This system became the deadliest tropical cyclone of the season as it was responsible for at least 118 deaths across the Caribbean as torrential rain caused flooding and mudslides. [USA Today]
  A visible image obtained from the sensors on NOAA's GOES-12 satellite shows the clouds associated with Hurricane Noel as it moves northward away from the Bahamas last Friday. [NOAA OSEI] An image made from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite shows clouds associated with then Tropical Storm Noel as it was moving across the waters of the Bahamas near the end of last week. [NASA Earth Observatory] An image depicts a week's rainfall totals across the Caribbean and western Atlantic associated with the passage of Noel as determined by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis using data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. [NASA Earth Observatory]
- No organized tropical cyclones were reported across the eastern or central North Pacific this past week.
- In the western North Pacific, Tropical Storm Faxai was relatively short lived as it moved across the ocean to the northeast well off the southeast coast of Japan over the previous weekend. This past weekend, a new tropical depression formed east of Luzon in the northern Philippines and intensified to become Typhoon Peipah on Monday (local time) just before traveling across Luzon.
- In the North Indian Ocean basin, Tropical Cyclone 5A continued its travel toward the west-northwest across the Arabian Sea. An image from the MET-7 satellite shows clouds associated with Tropical Cyclone 5A as it traveled westward. [NOAA OSEI]
Milestone reached in deployment of Argo floats -- The 3000th Argo float was recently deployed, which not only marks a milestone in the international effort of oceanic observation, but also represents the attainment of the initial eight-year goal of an array of free-floating submersible floats that measure ocean temperature and salinity from the ocean surface to depths of approximately 6000 feet. The Argo network, which covers the global oceans, has provided important climate information, such as improvements in assessing ocean heat storage. [NOAA News] [Scripps Institution of Oceanography]
Fall cooling of the upper Great Lakes -- Surface temperature data of Lakes Michigan and Superior obtained by the MODIS sensors onboard NASA satellites and displayed by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison show that the surface waters have fallen between 10 and 20 Fahrenheit degrees across the upper Lakes between late August and late October. [NWSFO Milwaukee/Sullivan]
Green roofs help save energy and control storm water -- Green roofs that have a vegetated surface have been found to reduce energy costs and improve storm-water runoff, according to a recent study. [EurekAlert!]
Conserving mangroves important in tsunami-prone regions -- Using Landsat satellite images across the Indian Ocean basin for over a 30-year span, researchers have found that agricultural encroachment has been a greater factor in reducing the mangrove forests in tsunami-prone coastal areas than shrimp farming. [EurekAlert!]
Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods, and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
Global Water News Watch -- Other water news sources can be obtained through the SAHRA Project at the University of Arizona [SAHRA Project]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Concept of the Week: Water in Microclimates

Water is an important component of Earth's planetary-scale climate system, playing a key role in the global radiation balance (e.g., the greenhouse effect) and large-scale transport of heat (e.g., latent heat transfer and ocean currents). The global climate system exhibits considerable spatial variability so that Earth is a mosaic of many climate types and water is often an important factor in distinguishing between individual climates. Hence, for example, the climate of a desert differs from that of a rainforest primarily because of differences in precipitation totals and potential evaporation rate.

Climate (long-term average atmospheric conditions) also varies on smaller spatial scales. Here, we consider examples of how the local water and heat energy budgets vary on the scale of microclimates, having horizontal dimensions from less than 1 m to 100 m (3.3 ft to 330 ft) and vertical dimension from Earth's surface to an altitude of 100 m (330 ft).

All other factors being equal, afternoon air temperatures tend to be lower over an irrigated farm field than over a non-irrigated field. Where soils are wet, more of the available heat is used to evaporate water (latent heating) leaving less to raise the temperature of the soil surface and overlying air (sensible heating). In the Northern Hemisphere, snow tends to persist longer and the growing season is shorter on the shaded north- and east-facing hill slopes (facing away from the sun) than on south- and west-facing slopes (facing the sun). In portions of the Rocky Mountains, the sunnier, drier, and warmer south-facing slopes are sparsely vegetated by grasses, ponderosa pine, and juniper. Meanwhile, dense stands of fir and spruce grow on the shaded, moist, and cooler north-facing slopes.

Trees, sand dunes, buildings and other obstacles slow the wind and reduce the wind's ability to transport material (including soil particles) in suspension. Farmers take advantage of this effect by constructing shelterbelts (or "windbreaks") that reduce wind erosion of soil and modify the microclimate. A shelterbelt may consist of a fence or multiple rows of trees or bushes planted upwind of an agricultural field--usually oriented perpendicular to the prevailing wind direction. In the winter, snow-bearing horizontal winds slow as they encounter a shelterbelt. The wind's ability to transport snow diminishes and snow accumulates on the field immediately downwind of the shelterbelt. The air spaces within a snow cover make it a relatively poor conductor of heat so that the snow cover protects the underlying soil from deep penetration of subfreezing temperatures. In areas where winter wheat is grown, the snow cover protects the dormant plants from potentially damaging fluctuations in soil temperature. Snow trapped by shelterbelts also increases the local supply of soil moisture that becomes available during the spring thaw. Furthermore, slowing the wind reduces the evaporation of soil moisture. Significant increases in crop yields can be attributed to the microclimatic effects of shelterbelts.

Climatic contrasts are also evident between forested and non-forested areas. Wind speed diminishes considerably within a forest--as much as 60% to 80% at a distance of only 30 m (100 ft) into a deciduous forest. Weaker winds coupled with reduced solar radiation reaching the forest floor (due to the forest canopy) decreases the amount of evaporation from the forest floor. However, the relatively high rate of transpiration by forest vegetation more than compensates for the reduction in evaporation from the forest floor. Overall, the air in a forest tends to be somewhat more humid than the air over a nearby non-forested area. Even tall field crops such as corn have a similar effect on the microclimate.

Concept of the Week: Questions

In the Northern Hemisphere, snow is likely to persist longer on the shaded [(north-) (south-)] facing slope of a hill.
The relatively high humidity in forested areas is primarily the result of relatively high [(precipitation) (evaporation) (transpiration)] occurring in forested areas.

Historical Events:

5 November 1977...A slow moving storm produced five to nine inch rains across northern Georgia causing the Toccoa Dam to burst. As the earthen dam collapsed, the waters rushed through the Toccoa Falls Bible College killing three persons in the dorms. Thirty-eight persons perished at a trailer park along the stream. Eighteen bridges were washed out in Madison County. (David Ludlum)
5 November 1987...Heavy rains in California's Death Valley National Park washed out many park roads. As much as 1.20 in. of rain fell at Scotty's Castle, compared with the annual rainfall average of 2.28 in. Up to 8000 people attending a recreational encampment were stranded. (Accord Weather Calendar)
6 November 1994...Downtown San Francisco, CA was drenched with 6.19 in. of rain in 24 hrs to set an all-time record for the city.
6-13 November 1969...Severe ice storm between Quebec City and Manicouagan River power dams in Quebec caused over $1.5 million damage to transmission lines and towers. Over 30 transmission towers under construction were brought down. (The Weather Doctor)
8 November 1876...Two days of rain dumped 4.9 in. on Fredericton, New Brunswick. The rail line near Lawrence Station was washed out causing the derailment of the morning St. John-Fredericton run. (The Weather Doctor)
8 November 1914...On this date the longest "official" rain-free time span on record for the U.S. of 767 days ended in Bagdad, CA. Some meteorologists question the accuracy of this record kept by railroad employees at that time. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
9 November 1913...The "Freshwater Fury," a rapidly deepening extratropical cyclone, caused unpredicted gales on the Great Lakes. Seventeen ships, including eight large ore carriers on Lake Erie sank drowning 270 sailors. Cleveland, OH reported 17.4 in. of snow in 24 hrs, and a storm total of 22.2 in., both all-time records for that location. During the storm, winds at Cleveland averaged 50 mph, with gusts to 79 mph. The storm produced sustained winds of 62 mph at Port Huron, MI, wind gusts to 80 mph at Buffalo, NY and buried Pickens, WV under three feet of snow. (9^th-11^th) (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
9 November 1932...An unnamed hurricane struck Cuba, with winds reaching approximately 210 mph at Nuvitas. However, a storm surge was the main killer of 2500 of the 4000 residents of Santa Cruiz del Sur. Essentially no storm records exist, as the observer drowned, with records and instruments washed away. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
9-11 November 2001...More than the average month's total (3.7 inches) of heavy rains fell on Algiers, Algeria in just a few hours. The resulting massive floods and mudslides devastated northern Algeria and killed more than 700 people causing nearly $300 million worth of damage. (The Weather Doctor)
10 November 1835...A severe storm crossed the Great Lakes with 19 ships lost and 254 sailors killed. (Intellicast)
10 November 1975...Another "freshwater fury" hit the Great Lakes. A large ore carrier on Lake Superior, the Edmund Fitzgerald, sank near Crisp Point with the loss of its crew of 29 men. Eastern Upper Michigan and coastal Lower Michigan were hardest hit by the storm, which produced wind gusts to 71 mph at Sault Ste Marie, MI and gusts to 78 mph at Grand Rapids, MI. Severe land and road erosion occurred along the Lake Michigan shoreline. A popular hit song by Gordon Lightfoot was inspired by the storm. (David Ludlum) (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
Editors note: In 2000, the NOAA National Weather Service Forecast Office at Marquette, MI created a web page commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the sinking and describing the advances in marine weather forecasting over the last quarter century. EJH
10 November 1993...Violent storm over the Black Sea closed the Russian oil terminal port of Novorossisk for 20 days. "Bora" winds reported as high as 112 mph sank at least seven ships. (The Weather Doctor)
11 November 1099...Violent storm in the North Sea killed 100,000 people in England and The Netherlands. (The Weather Doctor)

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