WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

18-22 June 2007

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2007 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 27 August 2007. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE! The summer solstice will occur early Thursday afternoon (officially, 1806 Z, or 2:06 PM EDT, 1:06 PM CDT, etc.) as the Earth's spin axis is oriented such that the sun appears to be the farthest north in the local sky of most earth-bound observers. While most of us consider this event to be the start of astronomical summer, the British call the day the "Midsummer Day", as the apparent sun will begin its southward descent again. For essentially all locations in the Northern Hemisphere, daylight today will be the longest and the night will be the shortest of the year. Starting Friday, the length of darkness will begin to increase as we head toward the winter solstice on 22 December 2007 at 0608 Z. However, because the sun is not as perfect a time-keeper as a clock, the latest sunsets of the year at many mid-latitude locations will continue through about the first week of July -- a consequence of the earth being near aphelion (on 4 July 2007) and the apparent sun moving across the sky well to the north of the celestial equator.

Ocean in the News:

• The Big Apple needs to prepare for a big hurricane -- Early last week, the Homeland Security Secretary warned that New York City must prepare for the possibility of a sufficiently powerful hurricane that could cause serious flooding in lower Manhattan and other low-lying areas of the nation's largest city. Some experts believe that the city is due for a major hurricane. [USA Today]
• Keels laid for two new NOAA ships -- The keels were laid last Friday at a shipyard along the Mississippi Gulf Coast for two new ships that will join the NOAA fleet. The names of these vessels were selected by student teams in NOAA ship-naming contests and are the Ferdinand R. Hassler for a coastal mapping vessel and the Bell M. Shimada for a fisheries survey ship. [NOAA News]
• New type buoy is deployed -- Oceanographers from the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and the University of Washington, along with their Canadian colleagues from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, BC recently deployed a new type of buoy in the Gulf of Alaska that not only monitors traditional climate elements in the lower atmosphere and upper ocean, but also ocean chemistry. Specifically, instruments will measure the air-sea exchange of various gases as well as the pH, or acidity, of the surface waters so as to monitor suspected ocean acidification due to absorption of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by the ocean. [NOAA News]
• Great Lakes research is expanded -- NOAA officials recently announced that a new Great Lakes Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research has been established in Ann Arbor, MI representing a consortium of universities and institutions in seven states surrounding the Great Lakes that will be responsible for conducting collaborative research on Great Lakes issues. [NOAA News]
• "Green ships" in NOAA's fleet win a White House Award -- The Office of the Federal Environmental Executive announced that the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, MI, has won a White House Closing-the-Circle Award in the green purchasing category due to conversion of three NOAA Great Lakes research vessels from petroleum-based fuels and lubricants to bio-based products. [NOAA News]
• Lake levels are a concern on the Great Lakes -- The level of Lake Superior has dropped to its lowest level in 81 years and the levels of Lakes Michigan and Huron are also down, leading many residents and others whose lives depend on the Great Lakes concerned. [WZZM-13 Grand Rapids]
• New environmental satellite center is opened -- The NOAA Satellite Operations Facility was recently opened in Suitland, MD to serve as home to NOAA's environmental satellite operations that provide atmospheric and oceanic data needed for weather and climate prediction. [NOAA News]
• A different perspective of Florida's Everglades -- A photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station shows the mangrove, marsh and prairie in southern sections of the Everglades National Park, the near shore waters of Florida Bay and US Highway 1 as it beginnings it journey along the Florida Keys toward Key West. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• On to the center of the Earth -- A scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory claims that he has developed a new technique for precisely determining the position of the Earth's center of mass and how it moves through space to within one millimeter per year by using a combination of space based techniques and surface positioning sites. Knowledge of the position of the mass center of the solid earth could be used to study seasonal and longer term movements in the mass of atmosphere and oceans, which could be influenced by long-term climate change. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Polar explorers on thin sea ice guided by satellite -- Two Belgian explorers participating in the Arctic Arc expedition by collecting snow depth data for the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 mission are being aided in their 2000-km trek across disintegrating sea ice covering the Arctic by data collected on the Agency's Envisat satellite. [ESA]
• Pioneer tidal energy generator installed -- The world's first tidal energy generator that will create electricity on a commercial basis is being installed at the mouth of Northern Ireland's Strangford Lough. [BBC News]
• Arctic fisheries should be closed -- The Marine Conservation Alliance is supporting the closing of all federal waters in the Bering Strait to commercial fishing as acted upon by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The decision to close the fisheries until a management plan is developed is based upon concern that climatic change has had a significant impact on the fisheries. [Marine Conservation Alliance] (Note this link is to a pdf document that requires Adobe Acrobat Reader; see below)
• Marine algae can change for self-protection -- Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found that marine phytoplankton can change its form as a means of protection against predator attacks. [EurekAlert!]
• More evidence presented for Martian oceans -- A team of researchers from the Carnegie Institution, Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Toronto have found that the variations in the topography of features on the surface of Mars that look like shoreline could have been caused by the periodic variations of the Martian spin axis and the poles over the last three billion years in a way that would suggest the presence of large oceans on that planet's surface. [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]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

• 18 June 1903...Alaska's first coastal lighthouse, Scotch Cap Lighthouse, was lit. This light, which was also the first major lighthouse built by the U.S. outside the 48 coterminous states, was located near the west end of Unimak Island on the Pacific side of Unimak Pass, the main passage through the Aleutian Islands into the Bering Sea. This light in an octagonal wooden tower was replaced by a concrete lighthouse in 1940, which was destroyed by a tsunami in 1946, with the loss of the five crewmen stationed there. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 18 June 1875...A severe coastal storm (or possible hurricane) struck the Atlantic coast from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. Eastport, ME reported wind gusts to 57 mph. (David Ludlum)
• 19 June 240 BC...On the summer solstice, Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of the Earth using two sticks.
• 19-26 June 1972...Hurricane Agnes (a category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale) moved onshore along the Florida Panhandle near Cape San Blas and Apalachicola with wind gusts to 80 mph, and eventually exited Maine on the 26^th. This hurricane moved northeast and joined with an upper level disturbance, producing from 10 to 20 inches of rain along its path along the Eastern Seaboard. In the Middle Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania, 24 hour rainfall amounts were generally 8 to 12 inches, with up to 19 inches in extreme southwestern Schuylkill County. At Wilkes-Barre, PA the dike was breached destroying much of the town. Agnes was responsible for 125 deaths, mainly due to flooding from North Carolina to New York State, and total damage was estimated at more than $3 billion. Torrential rains from Hurricane Agnes resulted in one of the greatest natural disasters in U.S. history. Agnes caused more damage than all other tropical cyclones in the previous six years combined (which included Celia and Camille). (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
• 20 June 1597...Willem Barents, the Dutch explorer who tried to search for the Northeast Passage, died in the Arctic off the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya when his ship became trapped in ice. (Wikipedia)
• 20 June 1819...The 320-ton paddle-wheel SS Savannah arrived in Liverpool, England to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, having left the port of Savannah, GA on 22 May. (InfoPlease Daily Almanac)
• 20 June 1940...The first successful west to east navigation of the Northwest Passage began at Vancouver, BC. (Wikipedia)
• 21 June 1791...A hurricane, called El Temporal de Barreto - the storm of Barreto, generated a monster ocean wave that carried off the coffin of a rich, but hated, count as he lay in state in his mansion near Havana, Cuba. (The Weather Doctor)
• 21 June 1886...A destructive hurricane hit the Apalachicola-Tallahassee area of Florida on the summer solstice. Extensive damage was done in Florida and throughout the southeast by this storm, which was the first hurricane of the year. Damage was due mainly to extremely high tides. (Intellicast)
• 21 June 1961...The first practical plant for the conversion of seawater to drinking water at Freeport, TX was dedicated when President John Kennedy pressed a switch installed in his Washington, DC office. The plant was capable of producing about a million gallons of water a day, supplying fresh water to Freeport at a cost of about $1.25 per thousand gallons. The large-scale evaporation method used then has now been replaced by reverse osmosis as special polymers are now used as filtering membranes. (Today in Science History)
• 22 June 1675...The Royal Greenwich Observatory was created by Royal Warrant in England by Charles II, with its practical astronomy serving as its primary mission, including navigation, timekeeping and the determination of star positions. In 1767 the observatory began publishing The Nautical Almanac, which established the longitude of Greenwich as a baseline for time calculations. The almanac's popularity among navigators led in part to the adoption (1884) of the Greenwich meridian as the Earth's prime meridian (0° longitude) and the international time zones. (Today in Science History)
• 22 June 1948...Congress enacted Public Law 738, which authorized the operation of floating ocean stations for the purpose of providing search and rescue communication and air-navigation facilities, and meteorological services in such ocean areas as are regularly traversed by aircraft of the United States. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 23 June 1501...The Portuguese navigator, Pedro Alvares Cabral, returned to Portugal after a voyage during which he claimed Brazil for Portugal and then journeyed to India in search of pepper and spices. (Wikipedia)
• 23 June 1611...English navigator Henry Hudson was set adrift along with his son and seven loyal crew members in an open boat in Hudson Bay by mutineers on his ship Discovery; they were never seen again. He was on his fourth voyage and he had become famous for attempting to find a route from Europe to Asia via the Arctic Ocean. (Wikipedia)
• 23 June 1716...The Province of Massachusetts authorized erection of first lighthouse in America on Great Brewster Island, Boston Harbor. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 23 June 1938...The first "oceanarium" opened at Marineland in St. Augustine, FL. (Today in Science History)
• 24 June 1497...The Italian navigator and explorer Giovanni (John) Cabot, sailing in the service of England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland, claiming the continent for England. (Wikipedia)

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