20-24 December 2010

DataStreme Ocean will return for Spring 2011 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 17 January 2011. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Ocean News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

Sincerely,

• Happy Winter Solstice! The winter solstice will occur during the early evening hours of Tuesday, 21 December 2010 (officially, at 2338Z, or 6:38 PM EST, 5:38 PM CST, etc.). At that time, the earth's spin axis will be oriented such that the sun appears to be the farthest south in the local sky of most earth-bound observers. While most of us consider this event to be the start of astronomical winter, the British call that day the "Midwinter Day", as the apparent sun will begin its northward climb again. For essentially all locations in the Northern Hemisphere, on Monday, the night will be the longest and the daylight on the following day will be the shortest of the year. Starting Wednesday, the length of darkness will begin to shrink as we head toward the summer solstice on 21 June 2011 at 1716Z.

• Eye on the tropics -- During the last week, tropical cyclone activity was found across the tropical waters of the western North Pacific Ocean and the South Indian Ocean:
  Tropical Depression 19W formed over the waters of the South China Sea near the Philippines in the western North Pacific basin at the start of last week. This depression moved west toward the southern coast of Viet Nam before dissipating a day later. For additional information and satellite imagery, see the NASA Hurricane Page.
  In the South Indian Ocean basin, a low-pressure area identified as System 91S formed off the western coast of Australia at the midpoint of last week. By the end of the week, this low made landfall along the Australian coast. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information on this system.

• Earth scientists receive prestigious awards -- Two eminent climate scientists were honored at the recent 2010 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
  Pieter Tans, Ph.D., the head of the Carbon Cycle and Greenhouse Gases group at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, received the Roger Revelle Medal for his work on understanding the global carbon cycle and for raising public awareness of climate change. [NOAA News]
  Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, received the Athelstan Spilhaus Award for his contributions to improving public understanding of Earth science. [NASA JPL]

• Gulf oil spill response framework shifts to regional structure -- At the end of this past week, the federal government's response framework for the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill was transitioned from a unified joint agency mission to one that would be overseen by the regional US Coast Guard units within the Coast Guard's 8th District. [RestoreTheGulf.gov]

• New buoy to be deployed off South Africa to monitor ocean climate -- Scientists from NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) recently helped deploy an instrumented buoy called the Ocean Climate Station to be moored in the warm Agulhas Return Current off the southeast coast of South Africa. Sensors on the buoy include those that measure wind, air temperature, relative humidity, rain, solar and infrared radiation, barometric pressure, sea surface temperature and salinity, and near-surface currents. This deep ocean climate buoy and another one located south of Australia are currently the only such buoys located in the extratropical waters of the Southern Hemisphere that are part of NOAA's climate observation and monitoring efforts. [NOAA News]
• Biodiversity found in Indonesian waters by joint scientific mission -- US and Indonesian scientists conducted joint operations this past year in the waters off Indonesia's Sangihe and Talaud island chains onboard the Indonesian Research Vessel Baruna Jaya IV and NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer. They found high marine diversity extended deep in the region's waters, with a different mix of diversity between the shallow and deep ocean. [NOAA News]

• Restoration activities for seagrass recovery in Florida Keys are outlined -- A new report released last week by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries details the results of a five-year monitoring effort designed to repair seagrass in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary damaged by a 45-foot boat, the N-Control, in May 2001. [NOAA News]

• Attempts made to explain West Antarctic ice loss -- Scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have been using satellite and airborne science missions to learn the mechanisms responsible for the loss of ice in the West Antarctica Ice Sheet. These scientists suspect that surface winds lift warm water from the Southern Ocean onto the continental shelf surrounding West Antarctica, resulting in the melting. They hope that their findings will improve predictions of sea level rise. [NASA's Earth Science News Team]

• High biological productivity may have flourished in ancient ice-free Bering Sea -- Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Japan's Kyushu University and other international research institutions recently reported on their analysis of sediments collected from the floor of the Bering Sea during a nine-week expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). The sediments deposited during the Pliocene Warm Period (3.5 to 4.5 million years ago) indicate ice-free conditions year-around Bering Sea, which also contained high biological productivity. [University of California, Santa Cruz]

• 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, drought, floods, 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, to include drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

• 20 December 1987...Worst peacetime shipping disaster occurred as the Dona Paz, a Philippine ferry, sank after collision with oil tanker Vector off Mindoro island, setting off a double explosion. As many as 1749 confirmed deaths, but the death toll was probably closer to 3000.
• 21 December 1163...A hurricane hit villages in Holland/Friesland, causing floods.
• 21 December 1872...The HMS Challenger set sail from Portsmouth, England on the 4-year scientific expedition that would lay the foundation for the science of oceanography. (Wikipedia)
• 21 December 1936...Ice breaking operations in channels and harbors by the US Coast Guard was authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Executive Order No. 7521. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 22 December 1832...The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin reached the Barnevelts Islands
• 22 December 1837...Congress authorized the President "to cause any suitable number of public vessels, adapted to the purpose, to cruise upon the coast, in the severe portion of the season, and to afford aid to distressed navigators." This statute was the first authorizing activities in the field of maritime safety, thereby interjecting the national government into the field of lifesaving for the first time. Although revenue cutters were specifically mentioned, the performance of this duty was imposed primarily upon the Revenue Marine Service and quickly became one of its major activities. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 22 December 1894...The Dutch coast was hit by a hurricane.
• 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)
• 23 December 1854...A tsunami struck the coast of Japan, with water in the harbor of Simoda changing depth between 8 and 40 feet. Twelve hours later this giant wave reached the Pacific coast of the U.S. The newly installed self-registering tide gauges noted these waves. The information derived from this event enabled Alexander D. Bache, Superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, to apply a newly derived law relating ocean depth to wave speed and provide the first relatively accurate scientific estimate of the depth of an ocean between Japan and the Pacific coast of the U.S. The velocity of the sea wave from Simoda to San Francisco was 369 mph. (Today in Science History)
• 25 December 1492...The Santa Maria, one of the ships that Christopher Columbus used in his historic trans-Atlantic voyage, landed at the Dominican Republic.
• 25 December 1974...Tropical Cyclone Tracy (a hurricane in the waters surrounding Australia) made landfall near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Excellent warnings kept the death toll to between 50 and 60, with more than 20,000 people evacuated in the week following the storm. Some areas were totally devastated. Peak wind speeds reached exceeded 174 mph. (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Calendar)
• 26-31 December 1993...The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race off Australia was plagued by hurricane-force wind gusts in excess of 74 mph and 33 foot high seas. Of 104 starters, only 37 yachts finished the race. On the 28^th, one yacht owner spent five hours in the water after being swept overboard. (Accord's Weather Calendar)
• 26 December 2004...A massive earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter magnitude scale approximately 100 miles off the western coast of Sumatra created a tsunami that caused devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, The Maldives and many other areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean. The death toll is currently estimated at more than 300,000. Officials say the true toll may never be known, due to rapid burials. Indonesia was worst affected with as many as 219,000 people killed. (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, 2010, The American Meteorological Society.