WEEKLY WATER NEWS

17-21 December 2007

DataStreme Water in the Earth System (WES) will return for Spring 2008 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 14 January 2008. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Water News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

Applications for a prestigious scholarship invited -- NOAA is accepting applications from qualified college undergraduate students interested in pursuing degrees in ocean and atmospheric sciences and education to the Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship. As many as 100 undergraduates could each receive up to $29,050 for their academic studies related to NOAA science, research, technology, policy, management, and education activities. Applications will be accepted through 8 February 2008. [NOAA News]

Water in the News:

• Eye on the Tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity was reported last week in the North Atlantic and South Indian Ocean basins:
  • In the North Atlantic basin, Tropical Storm Olga, the fifteenth named tropical cyclone of the 2007 hurricane season, developed early last week near Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and intensified by midweek as it moved westward across Hispaniola. By late in the week, it had weakened to a tropical depression, with remnants found across the Caribbean between Cuba and Jamaica. As many as 25 people had died across the Caribbean basin because of the floods produced by torrential rain accompanying Olga. [USA Today] An image obtained from NOAA's GOES-10 satellite early last week shows the clouds associated with Tropical Storm Olga as it was approaching Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. [NOAA OSEI]
  • In the South Indian Ocean, Tropical Storm 06S formed late last week near Diego Garcia. As of late Sunday, this marginal tropical storm was moving to the southwest. An image generated from data collected by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua satellite shows the temperature of the tops of the clouds surrounding Tropical Storm 06S. [NASA Hurricane Page]
• Animations help improve tropical cyclone damage prediction -- A student intern science team from around the country helped developed new computer graphics that enabled imagery from NASA's QuikSCAT (Quick Scatterometer), Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, Jason-1 and Aqua satellites to be used in a new hurricane animation designed to help forecasters predict storm damage more accurately. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Oil spills off Korean coast -- An image from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar on the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite shows a large crude oil spill in the Yellow Sea offshore of South Korea from the tanker Hebei Spirit following a collision with another ship a week ago [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Flooding affects the Pacific Northwest -- Images of the coastal regions of Washington State and Oregon made in late November and one week ago by the MODIS sensors on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites show the effect that heavy rain from numerous storms had upon the region's rivers. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Monitoring the snow -- Winter storms moving across the country during the last week have deposited a snow cover from the mountains of the Southwest to the Midwest. An image obtained from the NOAA-17 satellite at the start of last week shows the snow on the mountains in the Four Corners area (Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. [NOAA OSEI] An image from a MODIS sensor on one of NASA's satellites made at midweek displays the snow cover from the central Rockies across the Plains to the Midwest. [NOAA OSEI]
• Rain from a Kona storm floods the Aloha State -- An image produced by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis shows the widespread heavy rain across the Hawaiian Islands from a recent "Kona Low", a type of storm named for the western or Kona coast of Hawaii's Big Island that brings unsettled weather to the islands. Data for this image was obtained from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Sea ice on the move -- MODIS images obtained from NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites of the seasonal ice in Antarctica's Ross Sea on two consecutive days last week show that the seasonal sea ice had broken up and was beginning to flow away from the continent as summer returns to the Southern Hemisphere. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Melting of Greenland ice sheet appears to be accelerating -- A study conducted at the University of Colorado at Boulder based on data from an extensive climate monitoring network on the Greenland ice sheet along with satellite data beginning in 1979 indicates that the melt of the ice sheet during the summer of 2007 has been the largest observed during the satellite era and represents an accelerated melting rate. [EurekAlert!]
• Arctic surface waters could warm without insulating ice cap -- An oceanographer at the University of Washington claims that the large expanse of ice-free Arctic Ocean during 2007 was accompanied by sea surface temperatures that increased by 5 Celsius degrees above century-long average temperatures across the region, because of the record low summer sea ice cover and the loss of its insulating capabilities. [EurekAlert!]
• Mysteries on the Arctic sea floor are explored -- Expeditions to the Arctic by researchers including those from Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center are investigating the origin of "mud waves", which are 100-foot wide accumulations of mud on the floor of the Arctic Ocean that appear to have been produced by ocean currents. Parallel groves and boulders also found in the sea floor point to formation from scraping by sufficiently massive arctic ice. [Ohio State University Research]
• Mud can accumulate even in moving water -- Geologists at Indiana University Bloomington and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that mud can accumulate in water bodies even when currents move swiftly, bringing into question the long-held notion that mud would only settle in quiet waters. This new research could not only influence engineering practices involving harbors and canals, but also affect dating of the past geologic and climatic record. [EurekAlert!]
• Satellites provide help in investigating clouds and climate change -- Researchers have been using data collected from NASA's "A-Train" constellation of five Earth observing satellites, especially the CloudSat and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation satellites, to determine the role that clouds have upon a variety of processes such as Arctic sea ice and global rainfall patterns, which ultimately would result in changes in climate. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Iridescent polar clouds seen from space -- NASA's AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere ) satellite has provided the first global-scale, full-season view of iridescent Polar Mesospheric Clouds that form at altitudes approximately 50 miles above Earth's surface. [NASA]
• Monitoring of marine debris commences in a marine sanctuary -- NOAA has established a new monitoring program in Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary offshore of the Georgia coast to collect data on the location and types of marine debris in the sanctuary in order to support cleanup efforts. [NOAA News]
• Role of climate on hurricanes considered -- Scientists at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science have determined that increases in air temperature and atmospheric humidity appear to be more important than increased local sea surface temperature in increasing the tropical cyclone "potential intensity", a measure of the upper limit on hurricane intensity. [EurekAlert!]
• Wetter storms in Northern Hemisphere foreseen -- Two studies conducted at the University of Colorado at Boulder predict that wetter storms could occur across the Arctic and the Northern Hemisphere because of projected increases in global temperatures. One of the studies also indicates an increase in storm frequency across the Arctic. The increased precipitation could affect seasonal snow cover, ice sheet growth and even the thermohaline circulation of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. The other study points to increased greenhouse gas emission as the cause of the precipitation changes. [EurekAlert!]
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes-- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, to include 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.

Historical Events:

• 17 December 1884...A three-week blockade of snow began at Portland, OR. A record December total of 34 inches was received. (David Ludlum)
• 19 December 1967...The second heavy snow in a week brought a total of 86 inches of snow to Flagstaff, AZ with a record snow depth of 83 inches. Many homes, farm buildings and business structures collapsed from the weight of the snow. The snows inflicted great hardship on the Indian reservations. (Intellicast) (David Ludlum)
• 20 December 1990...Snow fell at Santa Maria, CA for the first time since records were kept. (Intellicast)
• 21 December 1892...Portland, OR was buried under an all-time record 27.5 inches of snow. (21^st-24^th) (The Weather Channel)
• 23 December 1811...A cold storm hit Long Island Sound with a foot of snow, gale force winds, and temperatures near zero. During the storm many ships were wrecked, and in some cases, entire crews perished. (David Ludlum)

Return to DataStreme WES Website

Prepared by AMS WES Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2007, The American Meteorological Society.