WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

10-14 August 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.

Ocean in the News:

• Eye on the tropics --- During the last week:
  In eastern North Pacific, a tropical cyclone developed over the ocean waters off the southwestern coast of Mexico at the start of last week and traveled to the northwest well offshore. This system eventually became Tropical Storm Felicia. By the end of the week, the storm weakened and the tropical depression had dissipated well to the west of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. Satellite images and additional information on Enrique appears on the NASA Hurricane Page
  A named tropical cyclone that ultimately became Hurricane Felicia formed early last week well off the Central American coast. This hurricane became a major category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale as it traveled westward. By early Saturday, this hurricane moved into the Central Pacific basin as it crossed the 140-degree West meridian of longitude that serves as the boundary between the Eastern and Central Pacific basins. An image obtained from the scatterometer instrument on NASA's QuickSCAT satellite shows the low level wind circulation spiraling into the major hurricane in a characteristic counterclockwise inflow. [NASA Earth Observatory] This system was heading for the Hawaiian Island chain, where various advisories had been posted in anticipation of possible landfall early this coming week. Additional information on Felicia can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
  In western North Pacific a tropical cyclone identified as Typhoon Morakot formed at the start of last week and intensified into a category 2 typhoon (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) as it traveled to the west toward Taiwan. This typhoon made landfall on Taiwan over this past weekend, bringing flooding rain of epic proportions. See additional information on Typhoon Morakot [NASA Earth Observatory] and the NASA Hurricane Page
  A named tropical cyclone, identified as Tropical Storm Goni formed in the Gulf of Tonkin last week and moved north toward the southern coast of China. By Saturday, this system had weakened to Tropical Depression Goni.
  The tenth tropical depression of 2009 in the western North Pacific formed south of Japan at the end of last week.
• Official hurricane season outlook is lowered -- Forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, along with those from the National Hurricane Center recently released an updated Atlantic hurricane season outlook last week. These forecasters believe that the effects of the El Niño that is beginning should result in fewer tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic Basin, with the total number of tropical cyclones being at or below long-term averages. While the forecasters believe that a 50-percent probability of a near-normal season, which is lower than their earlier May outlook, they warn that the public should become prepared for a possible landfalling hurricane or tropical storm. [NOAA News]
  Likewise, the hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University, including Philip Klotzbach and William Gray, have also reduced their forecast of named tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic basin due to the development of El Niño conditions. [USA Today]
• Exploring sunken World War II warships -- During the next three weeks, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries will lead a research expedition off the coast of North Carolina to study World War II shipwrecks sunk in 1942 during the Battle of the Atlantic. Some of these shipwrecks located in the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" include sunken vessels from U.S. and British naval fleets, merchant ships, and German U-boats. [NOAA News] Editor's Note: During the last week, NOAA personnel associated with the NOAA Monitor National Marine Sanctuary were to participate in a private research expedition to study marine life living on and around the wreck of the Civil War's USS Monitor. [EurekAlert] EJH
• New home selected for NOAA's Marine Operations Center-Pacific -- Last week, NOAA officials announced that the Port of Newport, OR had been selected to become the new home base beginning in 2011 for the agency's Marine Operations Center-Pacific, where all NOAA ship operations would be located. [NOAA News]
• Norwegian Sea algal bloom -- A recent image obtained from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite shows a region of the near surface waters of the Norwegian that have an aqua color because of the algal bloom associated with a proliferation of phytoplankton. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Wastewater used to produce electricity for desalination -- Researchers at Penn State University and China's Tsinghua University have developed an organic process that cleans wastewater at the same time as it generates sufficient electricity to remove up to 90 percent of the salt from seawater. [EurekAlert!]
• Finding the hot spots for rogue waves -- A professor at San Francisco State University claims that he can determine those locations along a coast susceptible to potentially dangerous freak or rogue waves based upon his wave model simulations that focus on changes in water depth and water currents. [EurekAlert!]
• Ocean acidification documented in central North Pacific -- As part of the Hawaii Ocean Time-series program, researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa have developed a detailed 20-year record of ocean acidification from the ocean samples that they have taken at Station ALOHA, which is located north of the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. During this 20-year span, the pH of the ocean water has decreased due to increased uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, resulting in increased acidity that could affect marine ecosystems. [EurekAlert!]
• Record high water temperatures off Australia -- Oceanographers from Australia's Wealth from Oceans Flagship, a large-scale multidisciplinary research partnership involving CSIRO, have found that the winter water temperatures in the oceans marking the Leeuwin Current curling around the southern tip of Tasmania are the highest for the past three months considered as Southern Hemisphere winter. [CSIRO]
• Data from new ocean satellite available to public -- NASA and the French Space Agency recently announced that following a year of calibration and validation by an international team of scientists following the launch of the NASA/French Space Agency Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 satellite in June 2008, research-quality sea surface height data from this satellite are now to the public. These products, to be distributed jointly by NOAA and France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales will be used primarily by climate researchers for climate monitoring and modeling, including the time series of changes in sea surface height originally monitored by the NASA/French Space Agency Jason-1 satellite. [NASA JPL]
• Aura satellite reaches fifth anniversary -- NASA officials at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Laboratory's Aura satellite, which orbits around Planet Earth in a near polar, sun-synchronous orbit with a period of approximately 100 minutes as the "caboose" of NASA's "A-train afternoon constellation of satellites", currently orbiting about seven minutes behind EOS Aqua, CloudSat, and CALIPSO. Aura, which has fulfilled its initial five-year lifetime, contains for four instruments that continuously monitors the composition and dynamics of the planetary atmosphere, focusing upon those species that affect the planetary climate, specifically, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, cloud cover, water vapor and aerosols. [NASA JPL]
  Editor's note: Additional detailed material concerning this NASA satellite mission can be found on the NASA Global Climate Change page. EJH
• 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.

Historical Events:

• 10 August 1519...Five ships under the command of the Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, set sail from the Spanish seaport Seville to Sanclucar be Barrameda, staying there until 21 September, when they departed to circumnavigate the globe. This expedition traveled westward and ultimately returned to Europe in September 1522. (Wikipedia)
• 10 August 1675...King Charles II laid the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. (Today in Science History)
• 10-11 August 1831...A violent hurricane devastated Barbados. Death toll was estimated to be from 1500 to 2500 people. (The Weather Doctor)
• 10 August 1856...The Isle Derniere (Last Island) disaster occurred off the coast of Louisiana. A storm tide drowned 140 vacationers as a five-foot wave swept over Low Island during a hurricane. (The Weather Channel) The hurricane completely devastated the fashionable hotel and pleasure resort on Last Island, 150 miles east of Cameron. Storm surge swept an estimated 400 people to their death. Today the island is just a haven for pelicans and other sea birds. (Intellicast)
• 10 August 1954...A ground-breaking ceremony was held at Massena, NY for the St. Lawrence Seaway. (Wikipedia)
• 10 August 1971...President Nixon signed the Federal Boat Safety Act of 1971 considered to be most significant legislation in the long history of federal action in this field. The new act, which repealed most of the Federal Boating Act of 1958 and amended the Motorboat Act of 1940, shifted responsibility from boat operator to manufacturer. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 10 August 1980...Hurricane Allen came ashore north of Brownsville, TX dropping fifteen inches of rain near San Antonio, and up to 20 inches in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, ending a summer long drought. Winds at Port Mansfield gusted to 140 mph with a storm surge of 12 feet. Tidal flooding occurred along the South Texas coast. Hurricane Allen packed winds to 150 mph, and also spawned twenty-nine tornadoes. Total damage from the storm was estimated at 750 million dollars. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
• 10 August 1993...Three ships -- the barge Bouchard B155, the freighter Balsa 37, and the barge Ocean 255 -- collided in Florida's Tampa Bay. The Bouchard spilled an estimated 336,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil into Tampa Bay. (InfoPlease)
• 11 August 1909...The liner S.S. Arapahoe was the first ship to use the S.O.S. radio distress call. Its wireless operator, T. D. Haubner, radioed for help after a propeller shaft snapped while off the coast at Cape Hatteras, NC. The call was heard by the United Wireless station "HA" at Hatteras. A few months later, Haubner on the S.S. Arapahoe received an SOS from the SS Iroquois, the second use of SOS in America. Previously, the distress code CQD had been in use as a maritime distress call, standardized by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. in 1904. The second International Radio Telegraphic Convention (1906) proposed the alternative SOS for its distinctive sound, which was ratified as an international standard in 1908. (Today in Science History)
• 11 August 1940...A major hurricane struck Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC causing the worst inland flooding since 1607. (David Ludlum)
• 11 August 1988...Moisture from what remained of Tropical Storm Beryl resulted in torrential rains across eastern Texas. Twelve and a half inches of rain deluged Enterprise, TX, which was more than the amount received there during the previous eight months. (The National Weather Summary)
• 12 August 1778...A Rhode Island hurricane prevented an impending British-French sea battle, and caused extensive damage over southeast New England. (David Ludlum)
• 12 August 1955...During the second week of August, hurricanes Connie and Diane produced as much as 19 inches of rain in the northeastern U.S. forcing rivers from Virginia to Massachusetts into a high flood. Westfield, MA was deluged with 18.15 inches of rain in 24 hours, and at Woonsocket, RI the Blackstone River swelled from seventy feet in width to a mile and a half. Connecticut and the Delaware Valley were hardest hit. Total damage in New England was 800 million dollars, and flooding claimed 187 lives. (David Ludlum)
• 12 August 1958...USS Nautilus (SSN-571) arrived Portland, England after completing the first submerged under ice cruise from Pacific to Atlantic Oceans. (Naval Historical Center)
• 13 August 1979...Fifteen yachtsmen died and 23 boats sank or were abandoned as storm-force winds, along with high seas, raked a fleet of yachts participating in an annual race between southwestern England and Fastnet Rock off southwestern Ireland. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 13 August 1987...Thunderstorms deluged the Central Gulf Coast States with torrential rains. Thunderstorms in Mississippi drenched Marion County with up to 15 inches of rain during the morning hours, with 12.2 inches reported at Columbia. Floodwaters swept cars away in the Lakeview subdivision of Columbia when the Lakeview Dam broke. Flash flooding caused more than three million dollars damage in Marion County. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
• 13 August 2004...Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 tropical low-pressure system on the Saffir-Simpson scale, struck the Gulf Coast of southwest Florida, making landfall north of Captiva, FL. At landfall, sustained winds of 145 mph, along with an unofficial gust of 173 mph on a medical building tower in Punta Gorda near Fort Myers. The greatest destruction occurring at Punta Gorda. Fifteen fatalities were directly attributed to the hurricane, with another 20 indirect deaths. Damage estimates were approximately $14 billion. A gust of 104 mph hit Arcadia, where a storm shelter with 1200 people inside lost a wall and part of a roof. (Wikipedia) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 15 August 1281...The Divine Wind, the Kamikaze, struck down the Chinese fleet attempting an invasion of Japan at Kyushu. This wind was likely due to a typhoon crossing the Sea of Japan. (The Weather Doctor)
• 15 August 1914...The Panama Canal was officially opened to traffic as the American ship SS Ancon completed its first transit of the canal, sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. (Wikipedia)
• 15 August 1934...After a series of earlier dives since June 1930, each progressively deeper, American zoologist William Beebe and Otis Barton made their pioneering, record-breaking ocean descent of 3028 feet in a bathysphere designed by Barton, withstanding over 1360 pounds of pressure. (Today in Science History)
• 15 August 1971...Hurricane Beth soaked Nova Scotia with up to 12 inches of rain. The deluge caused considerable crop damage and swamped highways and bridges, temporarily isolating communities on the eastern mainland of Nova Scotia. (The Weather Doctor)
• 16 August 1858...U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurated the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. However, a weak signal would force a shutdown of the service in a few weeks. (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, 2009, The American Meteorological Society.