WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

THANKSGIVING WEEK: 19-23 November 2012

This week is Thanksgiving Break for the Fall 2012 offering of the DataStreme Ocean course. This Weekly Ocean News contains new information items and historical data, but the Concept of the Week is repeated from Week 11.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving Week from the AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Ed Hopkins!

Items of Interest

A Long Polar Night -- After being above the horizon for only 38 minutes this past Sunday, the sun set at 1:31 PM Alaska Standard Time (18 November 2012) at Barrow, the northernmost city in Alaska, for the last time this year. The next time the sun will rise above the local horizon in Barrow will be at 1:11 PM AST on 22 January 2013. On that date, the sun will remain above the horizon for 44 minutes. While the sun will be below the horizon for the next 65 days, residents of this city will have roughly three hours of some diffuse sunlight each day that is equivalent to civil twilight, provided the cloud cover is not too thick. To check the sunrise and sunset times of Barrow or any location in the United States go to the US Naval Observatory's on-line, interactive service for the entire year.
Species dominance and ocean properties -- Discover how variations in both the physical and chemical properties of ocean waters can be accompanied by changes in the dominance of the various species of marine life in this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth.

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- During the last week, organized tropical cyclone activity was nearly nonexistent across the tropical ocean basins of either the Northern or Southern Hemispheres. Tropical Depression 25W formed during the middle part of last week over the waters of the South China Sea off the southeast of southern sections of Vietnam. However, this tropical depression dissipated within one day. The NASA Hurricane Page has more information and satellite images on Tropical Depression 25W.
Review of October 2012 global temperatures -- Preliminary data analyzed by scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center indicated that the global combined land and ocean average surface temperature for the October 2012 was 0.63 Fahrenheit degrees above the 20th century average (1901-2000) for the month. Therefore, last month's global combined temperature tied October 2008 for the fifth highest October temperature since global temperature records began in 1880. When considered separately, the monthly temperatures of the land surface for this recently concluded month resulted in the eighth highest October land surface temperature on record, while the October monthly average temperature over the global oceans tied October 2004 for the fourth highest September ocean temperature in 133 years.
Furthermore, when considering the combined land-ocean global temperature for the year to date, the temperature was the eight highest ten-month global temperature since 1880. [NOAA/NCDC State of the Climate] Another version of the global temperature anomaly map for October 2012 is available. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab]
During October, the sea ice over the Arctic Ocean doubled in size from the record September 2012 minimum, but the areal extent remained the second smallest for any October since satellite-derived ice records began in 1979. However, the sea ice around Antarctica was the third largest October ice extent on record.
Fisheries disaster declared for New Jersey and New York following Sandy -- Late last week, the Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank announced that her agency has determined a fishery resource disaster and a catastrophic regional fishery disaster had occurred along the Middle Atlantic coast due to last month's Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy. This disaster declaration allows the US Congress to appropriate federal relief funds for assistance to help coastal communities in New Jersey and New York and alleviate harm resulting from this natural disaster. NOAA will assist Congressional members and the governors of the affected states. [NOAA News]
Agreement between US and Morocco on sustainable fisheries -- Early last week, officials from the United States and Morocco signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the two nations that is designed to support efforts in both countries to use modern principles of fisheries management in support of global sustainable fisheries. Joint projects are currently underway including an experiment to use US-developed buoy gear as an alternative to traditional Moroccan drift nets used in Morocco's swordfish fishery. [NOAA Fisheries Service]
Projects funded to investigate effects of chemical dispersants in oil spills -- Recently, NOAA and the University of New Hampshire's Coastal Response Research Center announced research funding for three projects that are aimed at understanding the impact of dispersed oil and the chemicals used to disperse the oil on the sea surface following oil spills. [NOAA News]
Pacific walrus population tracked to observe effect of Arctic sea ice loss -- Scientists from the US Geological Society and their Russian colleagues who have been tracking tagged walruses in the Chukchi Sea claim that the sparse summer sea ice in the Arctic during the last five years have caused behavioral changes in the Pacific walruses. [USGS Newsroom]
Antarctic sea ice increases studied by NASA -- Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the British Antarctic Survey recently reported that observed increases in Antarctic sea ice cover over the past two decades are directly attributed to marked changes to Antarctic sea ice drift caused by changing winds across the region. These conclusions were based upon maps of daily ice motion measurements created by JPL from 19 years of record obtained by four U.S. Defense Meteorological satellites. [NASA JPL]
New dating of sea level records reveals more rapid response of global ice volume -- An international team of scientists have developed a new method for creating a high resolution and continuous record of sea-level variability over the last 500,000 years using dating the global sea level using Mediterranean data from radiometric (Uranium-series) dating of cave deposits. They used this dating method to obtain ice-volume estimates that were then compared with temperature reconstructions from independently dated ice core records from Greenland and Antarctica. Their conclusions were that a rapid response existed between global temperature and ice volume/sea-level, which could lead to sea-level changes by over one meter during the last glacial cycle (last 150,000 years). [University of Southampton News Release]
North American West Coast could have been in ancient hurricane belt --An international team of scientists from the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark and the United States have determined from sediments and fossils that the portion of the continental plate representing the current western side of the North America continent was located along the equator during the Ordovician Period approximately 450 million years ago. This orientation would have meant that the hurricane belt would have been to the east. [Durham University ]
A global portrait of aerosols produced -- A high-resolution map of the global distribution of aerosols has been produced by NASA's Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5). This visualization produced by the high-resolution model run at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center shows airborne dust from land surfaces, sea salt in storms over the oceans, smoke from fires and sulfate particles from volcanoes and fossil fuel combustion. [NASA GSFC]
In a separate study, scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been studying how certain pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) created from fossil fuel burning and forest fires from midlatitudes can reach the Arctic, even though these pollutants should have decayed long before reaching their destination. These scientists developed an ultra-sensitive instrument that analyzed individual particles to determine their size, composition and shape. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory News Center]
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.

This Concept of the Week is repeated from Week 11.

Concept of the Week: Living Coral and El Niño

El Niño episodes of 1982-83 and 1997-1998, the most intense of the century, confirmed the connection between higher than average ocean temperatures and bleaching of hermatypic corals. (Hermatypic corals live in warm shallow water and build large reefs.) Water temperatures higher than 29°C (the normal maximum sea surface temperature in the equatorial eastern Pacific) can trigger expulsion of zooxanthellae, microscopic dinoflagellates whose symbiotic relationship with coral polyps is essential for the long-term survival of coral. Without zooxanthellae, coral polyps have little pigmentation and appear nearly transparent on the coral's white skeleton, a condition known as coral bleaching. If maximum temperatures are not too high for too long, corals can recover, but prolonged warming associated with an intense El Niño (that may persist for 12 to 18 months) can be lethal to coral. Most hermatypic corals thrive when the water temperature is 27°C, but do not grow when the water becomes too cold. Although the ideal temperature varies with species and from one location to another, the temperature range for optimal growth is quite narrow--only a few Celsius degrees. This sensitivity to relatively small changes in water temperature is an important source of information on past climates as fossil coral is a significant component of many limestones. Evidence of bleaching episodes in fossil corals may yield important clues to past changes in the world's tropical ocean.

Coral, sometimes referred to as "the rainforests of the ocean," provides a base for local ecosystems and have many benefits (e.g., fisheries, tourism) that are important in many parts of the globe. Hence, vulnerability to El Niño-associated warming is an object of considerable scientific interest. During the 1997-98 El Niño, NOAA charted significant coral bleaching from portions of the Great Barrier Reef near Australia, French Polynesia in the south Pacific, in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya, and around the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. Closer to home, coral bleaching was reported in the Florida Keys, the Cayman Islands, and off the Pacific coast of Panama and Baja California. Fortunately damage from the 1997-98 El Niño warming was less drastic than the 1983-84 El Niño when up to 95% of the corals in some locations died. Many of the corals damaged in the late 1990s have at least partially recovered including important reefs in the Florida Keys. For additional information on coral status, go to the NOAA website http://www.coralreef.noaa.gov/.

Concept of the Week: Questions

Most hermatypic corals thrive at an ocean water temperature of [(10) (27)] °C.
Corals [(can) (cannot)] recover from bleaching if high ocean water temperatures are not long lasting.

Historical Events:

19 November 1493...The explorer Christopher Columbus became the first European to go ashore on modern day Puerto Rico one day after seeing it for the first time. At the time, he named the island San Juan Bautista. (Wikipedia)
19 November 1978...A waterspout came onshore to become a tornado near Muhio Wharf in Hilo Harbor on Hawaii's Big Island. Some industrial buildings lost their roofs. The proximity of the waterspout-tornado caused an airliner to change its landing approach to Hilo's airport. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
19 November 1996...The last component of the Confederation Bridge was placed that crosses the Northumberland Strait between Borden-Carleton, Prince Edward Island and Cape Jourimain, New Brunswick. This two-lane eight mile long bridge, which was opened in May 1997, is the longest bridge over ice covered salt waters in the world. Ice covers the strait for five months per year. (Today in Science History)
20 November 1820...The 238-ton American whaler Essex from Nantucket, MA was attacked by an 80-ton bull sperm whale approximately 2000 miles off the western coast of South America. Of the 20 crew members that escaped in three open boats, only five survived the 83-day journey to the coastal waters of South America. The classic novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851) was inspired in part by the story of the Essex. (The History Channel)
21 November 1987...Truk Island (Federated States of Micronesia at 7.4 degrees N, 151.7 degrees E) was struck by the rapidly intensifying Tropical Storm Nina, as winds gusted to 95 mph. Five died, and most buildings were destroyed. A storm of such intensity so close to the equator is somewhat unusual. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
22 November 1992...Supertyphoon Gay generated gusts up to 120 mph on Guam in the western Pacific. Only one injury was sustained. Earlier, when at its peak approximately 1000 miles southeast of Guam, Supertyphoon Gay had sustained surface winds estimated to 185 mph with gusts to 225 mph. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
23 November 1869...The clipper ship, the Cutty Sark, was launched at Dumbarton, Scotland. This three-masted and 212-foot long ship was one of the last clipper ships to be built and is the only one surviving to the present day, residing in a dry dock at Greenwich, England. (Wikipedia)
23-24 November 1981...Typhoon Irma, the worst in 10 years, struck north central Philippines (mostly Luzon) with winds to 139 mph and a storm surge of 16 feet. More than 236 people died, while 600,000 were made homeless. Entire provinces were left without power or communication. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
24 November 1982...Hurricane Iwa lashed the Hawaiian Islands of Niihau, Kauai, and Oahu with high winds and surf. Winds gusting to 120 mph caused extensive shoreline damage. Winds at Honolulu gusted to 81 mph. Damage totaled 150 million dollars on Kauai, and fifty million dollars on Oahu. The peak storm surge on the south shore was six to eight feet. It marked the first time in 25 years that Hawaii had been affected by a hurricane. (The Weather Channel)