19-23 December 2011

DataStreme Ocean will return for Spring 2012 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 16 January 2012. 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 overnight hours of Wednesday (21 December 2011) and Thursday (the 22nd, or officially, on 22 December 2011 at 0530Z, or 12:30 AM EST, 11:30 PM CST on Wednesday, 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, Wednesday night will be the longest and the daylight on Thursday will be the shortest of the year. Starting Friday, the length of darkness will begin to shrink as we head toward the summer solstice on 20 June 2012 at 2309Z.

• Eye on the tropics -- During the last week, tropical cyclone activity was found across the tropical waters of the western North Pacific Ocean basin. Tropical Depression 26-W formed at the start of last week over the waters of the South China Sea and traveled westward and then southwestward before dissipating a day later. Check the NASA Hurricane Page for more information on Tropical Depression 16-W.
  Tropical Storm Washi formed to the east of the Philippine Islands early last week and traveled westward, passing across Mindanao and the other southern islands in the Philippines late in the week as a tropical storm. Torrential rains associated with Washi led to major flooding that took as many as 650 lives and resulted in 800 missing people by Sunday (local time) across the southern Philippines. (USA Today) As of this past weekend, Washi continued to travel across the South China Sea as it intensified from a minimal tropical storm. This system could possibly curve toward the southwest. For additional information and satellite images, consult the NASA Hurricane Page.
  NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recently released a link to the 4.5-minute GOES-13 satellite video of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season [NASA GSFC]
• Benefits arise from bilateral collaboration on Arctic Ocean survey -- Recently, a five-year collaboration between the United States and Canada designed to survey the Arctic Ocean was concluded. Scientific data were collected to delineate the extended continental shelf, or that section of the continental shelf extending beyond 200 nautical miles from the coastline. Officials from both countries noted that the partnership saved costs and increased data collection. The 2011 joint seafloor survey operations consisted of a US Arctic mission was led by the Joint Hydrographic Center, a partnership between NOAA and the University of New Hampshire, while the Canadian mission was led by the Geological Survey of Canada of Natural Resources Canada. [NOAA News]
• Legislation drafted to help protect nation's fisheries from unfair competition -- A bill drafted by NOAA and backed by the Obama administration was introduced into the US Congress this past week that would prevent pirate fishing vessels from entering US ports to offload their illegally caught seafood. This measure restricting such "illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing" would benefit the nation's fisheries, seafood buyers and consumers by keeping illegal seafood out of global trade. [NOAA News]
• Public input on early restoration of the Gulf requested -- The Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Trustees released the Deepwater Horizon Draft Phase I Early Restoration Plan & Environmental Assessment for a formal 60-day public comment last week. The Deepwater Horizon NRDA Trustees include officials from NOAA, the US Department of Interior and state agencies from the five Gulf States of Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. This assessment represents the first in a series of plans designed to begin restoration of the Gulf of Mexico from the damages caused by the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and to compensate for natural resource injuries, including the loss of human use of Gulf resources. [NOAA News] [Note: This link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader. See below.]
• A global review of November 2011 temperatures -- Preliminary analysis of temperature data by scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center indicates that the worldwide combined ocean and land surface temperature for November 2011 ranked as the twelfth highest global November surface temperature since a sufficiently dense and reliable network began in 1880. They also found that the global ocean surface temperature was the twelfth highest for November, while that month's globally averaged land surface temperature for November 2011 was the sixteenth highest on record. The scientists also reported that the combined land and ocean surface temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere autumn (September-November 2011) were the twelfth highest for all boreal autumn seasons going back to 1880. Furthermore, when averaged over the first ten months of 2011, the combined ocean and land surface temperature was the eleventh highest January through October average in 132 years of record. La Niña conditions continued during November and could extend through Northern Hemisphere winter (December 2011-February 2012), which could affect global ocean temperatures in the upcoming months.
  The average Arctic sea ice extent for November 2011 was the third lowest November sea ice extent since satellite surveillance began in 1979. The November sea ice extent around Antarctica was the eleventh smallest on record. [NOAA News]
  NOTE: The National Climatic Data Center has been using an upgraded data set of monthly mean temperatures in calculating global land surface temperature anomalies and trends for its Global Monthly State of the Climate Report.
• Colorful views of oceanic blooms from space -- Natural color images made during the last week from data collected by the MODIS sensors on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites show a variety of colors in near-surface ocean waters due to phytoplankton. An image from the Aqua satellite shows green hues in the waters of the Persian Gulf. [NASA Earth Observatory]
  Another image from the Terra satellite reveals blue colors in the waters of the South Atlantic near the Falkland Islands. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• 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.

• 19 December 1551...The Dutch west coast was hit by a hurricane.
• 19 December 1741...Vitus J Bering, Dutch navigator/explorer, died on this date.
• 19-21 December 1835...The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin approached New Zealand and sailed into the Bay of Islands.
• 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)

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2011, The American Meteorological Society.