27-31 July 2009

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2009 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 31 August 2009. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

• Catching the march of the eclipse shadow -- A pair of visible images of the Eastern Hemisphere obtained last Wednesday from the Japanese geosynchronous satellite MTSAT shows the progression of the Moon's shadow cast across sections of southeastern China and the Pacific Ocean during this century's longest total solar eclipse. [NASA Earth Observatory]

• Eye on the tropics --- During the past week, tropical weather across the tropical ocean basins was uncharacteristically quiet for this time of the season, with no named tropical cyclones (low pressure systems that are either tropical storms or hurricanes).
  In the North Atlantic Basin, two areas of thunderstorms combined over the waters of the Caribbean by midweek to form a broad area of low pressure. This low moved northward across the western North Atlantic, bringing heavy rain to the Eastern Seaboard of the US at the end of the week. For more information and satellite imagery, consult the NASA Hurricane Page.
• Educational partnership announced for the City By the Bay -- A five-year partnership between NOAA and the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA was announced last week that would develop hands-on interactive displays at the Exploratorium near Fisherman's Wharf designed to provide the public with state of the art climate and ocean science. [NOAA News]
• Rebuilding shark populations plan proposed -- NOAA’s Fisheries Service recently announced that nine public hearings will be held during the next two months in various coastal communities along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to describe and to seek public opinion on the proposed measures designed to terminate overfishing and rebuild several types of shark populations, including blacknose sharks. [NOAA News]
• New England "red tide" response gets funding aid -- NOAA officials announced last week that the agency had awarded $121,000 to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as emergency funding to aid in conducting research cruises along with the University of Maine that would monitor the toxins formed in the New England coastal waters due to the toxic algal bloom, which is often identified as "red tide." [NOAA News]
• Help in safeguarding data buoys requested -- Following several incidents where instrument buoys owned by NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center had been damaged or cut from their moorings in the Pacific Ocean, officials with NOAA’s National Weather Service are requesting help from the marine community in safeguarding these offshore buoys that are designed to provide critical data for weather and tsunami forecasts. [NOAA News]
• Caribbean coral bleaching is likely -- Early last week, scientists from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Program released their Coral Bleaching Outlook that stated conditions appeared favorable for significant coral bleaching and infectious coral disease outbreaks in the waters of the Caribbean Sea, especially around the Lesser Antilles due to high water temperatures anticipated through October 2009. [NOAA News]
• Nation's top commercial fishing ports in 2008 are identified -- As part of the "Fisheries of the United States 2008" report, NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced last week the ranking of the nation's commercial fishing ports for 2008 in terms of tonnage of fish caught and the economic value of the annual catch. For the 20th consecutive year, the Alaskan port of Dutch Harbor-Unalaska reported the largest annual amount of fish landed, while for the ninth year in a row, the port of New Bedford, MA maintained the highest economic value. [NOAA News]
• Saltwater recreational fishing provides a sign of coastal vitality -- Pointing to statistics appearing in the recently released "Fisheries of the United States 2008" report, officials with NOAA’s Fisheries Service report that during 2008, saltwater recreational anglers continued to provide the nation's coastal communities with important economic benefits, including $82 billion in sales and supporting 500,000 local jobs. [NOAA News]
• Ocean currents near Hawaiian munitions disposal sites to be studied -- At the end of last week, NOAA researchers deployed four high-precision sensor arrays at "Ordnance Reef" in the waters off the west coast of the Hawaiian island of Oahu and another array off Honolulu, so as to measure the ocean currents at locations that had been military munitions disposal sites. They also thought similar conditions could develop in the Gulf of Mexico and the central Pacific Ocean. [NOAA News]
• Proposals for new fisheries survey vessel are invited -- NOAA' Fisheries Service officials recently issued a Request for Proposals for construction of NOAA’s newest fisheries survey vessel, designed for 40-day mission science deployments, using designed modifications requested by NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, CA. [NOAA News]
• Monitoring sea ice off northern Canada -- An image obtained from the MODIS sensor onboard NASA's Terra satellite in early July shows the sea ice remaining along the coast of Canada’s Baffin Island. Last week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that during the first half of this current month, the sea ice extent had retreated at a faster rate than in 2008, but not as fast as during the record 2007 season. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Studying annual phytoplankton bloom from space -- A phytoplankton ecologist and physiologist at Oregon State University has developed a theory that explains the timing and cause of the annual phytoplankton bloom across the North Atlantic Ocean using ten years of ocean color data from NASA's Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) instrument. [NASA Earth Science News Team]
• New definition of seawater is adopted -- Meeting in Paris, France late last month, the General Assembly of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) accepted a new international definition of seawater developed by Australian, German and US scientists, cast in terms of a new salinity variable called "Absolute Salinity." The commission, considered the world's foremost ocean science body, hopes that this new thermodynamic definition of seawater will increase the accuracy of climate projections. [CSIRO] [Editor's Note: For additional information concerning the determination of salinity, see A pinch of salt produced by IOC. EJH]
• Assessing the role that the solar cycle plays in driving global climate -- NCAR researchers have used global climate computer models and ocean temperature data since 1890 in an attempt to determine the connection between solar activity and changes in global climate. They have found that maximum solar activity during a solar cycle appears to have impacts on Earth that resemble La Niña and El Niño events in the tropical Pacific Ocean. [NCAR/UCAR]
• Clouds play a clear role in climate change -- Using a half-century of climate data and many of the major climate models, researchers at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of San Diego recently reported that increasing ocean temperatures will likely lead to fewer lower level stratiform (layer-type) cloud formations, thereby enhancing warming of the oceans as more direct sunlight passes through the atmosphere. [EurekAlert!]
• Salmon passage at hydropower plants improved -- Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and colleagues at NOAA Fisheries and the Portland District of the US Army Corps of Engineers have developed acoustic tags and numerical river models that appear to be helping improve salmon passage at the Columbia Basin's hydroelectric dams. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory]
• Ocean health found to play a vital role in coral reef recovery -- Research conducted by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography indicates improving the overall ocean health would permit corals to recover from bleaching events, which occur due to rising sea temperatures. However, the frequency of coral bleaching is expected to increase as global climate change increases ocean temperatures worldwide. [EurekAlert!]
• A "motion picture" of a past warming event may give clue to future -- Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center from Climatic Research and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have run a detailed computer simulation of the atmospheric and oceanic conditions over the last 21,000 years, focusing Bølling-Allerød warming event (approximately 14,500 years ago), which may provide some understanding to what abrupt climate shifts that could occur in the future with additional warming of the planet. [University of Wisconsin News] [NCAR/UCAR]
• Discovery of tiny diamonds on the Channel Island point to comet impact -- Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Oregon and other institutions who found nano-sized diamonds on California's Santa Rosa Island claim that their discovery indicates strong evidence of a comet impact across North America approximately 12,900 years ago that may have resulted in the extinction of multiple species and the disappearance of the Clovis culture. This discovery fits with the cooling recorded by sediment cores obtained from the adjacent Santa Barbara Channel. [EurekAlert!]
• Geophysical expedition to Labrador Sea returns -- A team of geoscientists from Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute returned to Reykjavik, Iceland after a month-long expedition to the Labrador Sea on board the research vessel Maria S. Merian. Some of their accomplishments included the study of the ridge-like structure called the Eirik Drift at the southern tip of Greenland and the discovery of a seamount that indicated volcanic eruptions during the past several million years. [EurekAlert!]
• An All-Hazards Monitor --This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, marine weather, tsunamis, rip currents, Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and coral bleaching. [NOAAWatch]
• 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.

• 27 July 1866...The 1686-mile long Atlantic Cable was successfully completed between Newfoundland and Ireland by the American businessman Cyrus W. Field, allowing transatlantic telegraph communication for the first time. Two previous attempts at laying a cable ended in failure. (Wikipedia) (Today in Science History)
• 27 July 1926...A hurricane came inland near Daytona Beach, FL. The hurricane caused 2.5 million dollars damage in eastern Florida, including the Jacksonville area. (David Ludlum)
• 27 July 1943...On a whim, and flying a single engine AT-6, Lieutenant Ralph O' Hair and Colonel Duckworth were the first to fly into a hurricane. It started regular Air Force flights into hurricanes. (The Weather Channel)
• 28 July 1819...A small but intense hurricane passed over Bay Saint Louis, MS. The hurricane was considered the worst in fifty years. Few houses were left standing either at Bay Saint Louis or at Pass Christian and much of the Mississippi coast was desolate following the storm. An U.S. cutter was lost along with its thirty-nine crewmembers. The storm struck the same area that was hit 150 years later by Hurricane Camille. (David Ludlum)
• 31 July 1498...On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, the explorer Christopher Columbus became the first European to reach the island of Trinidad. (Wikipedia)
• 31 July 1978...A 50-yard wide waterspout came onshore at Kill Devil Hills, NC and destroyed a small house. One person died and four were hurt. Waterspouts are typically considered relatively benign. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 1 August 1498...Christopher Columbus reached Venezuela, the first known European to visit that country. (Wikipedia)
• 1-3 August 1989...Hurricane Chantal made landfall along the Upper Texas coast about sunrise on the 1^st. Chantal deluged parts of Galveston Island and southeastern Texas with 8 to 12 inches of rain. Unofficial totals ranged up to twenty inches. Winds gusted to 82 mph at Galveston, and reached 76 mph in the Houston area. Tides were 5 to 7 feet high. The hurricane claimed two lives, and caused 100 million dollars damage. The remains of Hurricane Chantal also deluged north central Texas with heavy rain. Up to 6.50 inches drenched Stephens County, and Wichita Falls reported 2.22 inches of rain in just one hour on the 2^nd. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
• 1 August 2002...At the Delaware Bay buoy located 26 miles southeast of Cape May, NJ, an ocean water temperature of 83.1 degrees Fahrenheit was measured--marking the highest ocean temperature recorded at that buoy since observations began there in 1984. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)

• 2 August 1880...Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted officially by the British Parliament, selected because Greenwich had been the national center for time since 1675. GMT was originally set-up to aid naval navigation, but was not on land until transportation improved. GMT was adopted by the U.S. at noon on 18 Nov 1883 when the telegraph lines transmitted time signals to all major cities. Subsequently, GMT was adopted worldwide on 1 Nov 1884 when the International Meridian Conference met in Washington, DC, USA and 24 time zones were created. (Today in Science History)
• 2-3 August 1922...A typhoon hit the China Coast at Swatow on the night of the 2^nd. The wind and the storm surge killed as many as 50,000 of the city's 65,000 residents. Barometric pressure at landfall had dropped to at least 932.3 millibars (27.53 inches). (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2009, The American Meteorological Society.