WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

12-16 December 2016

DataStreme Ocean will return for Spring 2017 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 23 January 2017. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Ocean News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

Items of Interest:

Perigean spring tide to occur early next week with a supermoon -- The moon will reach its full moon phase early Tuesday evening at 7:05 PM EST, 6:05 PM CST (or officially 0005Z on 14 December 2016). This full moon will occur slightly more than 24 hours after perigee, when the moon is closest to Earth in its elliptical orbit. Since the moon will come within 222,738 miles of Earth, it is called a "supermoon," as its closeness would make the moon appear larger than usual. However, the moon will not be as close as the historic supermoon of last month. [EarthSky] The closeness of the moon and increased gravitational pull will cause an increase in the height of ocean tides, resulting in what is called a "perigean spring tide" (or King Tide) during this week (11-16 December). [NOAA National Ocean Service High Tide Bulletin]
Student scholarships announced -- The NOAA Office of Education recently announced that scholarships are available to undergraduate and graduate students who are majoring in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences, along with several of the other scientific and technical disciplines that support NOAA's mission and programs. [NOAA Office of Education] These scholarships include:
- Educational Partnership Program (EPP) Undergraduate Scholarship: http://www.epp.noaa.gov/ssp_undergrad_page.html. This program provides an opportunity for rising junior students to study disciplines relating to the NOAA's mission. Students attending Minority Serving Institutions are encouraged to apply. The application deadline for the 2017 EPP Undergraduate Scholarship Program is 31 January 2017.
- Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship Program: http://www.oesd.noaa.gov/scholarships/hollings.html. This program is designed to: (1). increase undergraduate training in oceanic and atmospheric science, research, technology, and education and foster multidisciplinary training opportunities; (2) increase public understanding and support for stewardship of the ocean and atmosphere and improve environmental literacy; (3.) recruit and prepare students for public service careers with NOAA and other natural resource and science agencies at the federal, state and local levels of government; and (4.) recruit and prepare students for careers as teachers and educators in oceanic and atmospheric science and to improve scientific and environmental education in the United States. The application deadline for the 2017 Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship Program is 31 January 2017.

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics --- Tropical cyclone activity was limited to the North Indian Ocean basin last week as Tropical Storm Vardah formed over the waters of the Bay of Bengal approximately 800 miles to the south of Chittagong, India at midweek. Vardah traveled generally to the west toward the southeastern coast of India late week and into the weekend. By late Saturday, Vardah had intensified to a category 1 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. As of Sunday, Cyclone Vardah was located approximately 750 miles to the south-southwest of Calcutta, India. Current forecasts indicate that Vardah should make landfall along the eastern Indian coast near Chennai on Monday afternoon (local time) as a weak cyclone or strong tropical storm. Satellite images and additional information on Tropical Storm Vardah can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion & La Niña advisory outlook updates released -- Forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) released their monthly "El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion" late last week. They showed La Niña conditions to be persisting through November as below average sea surface temperatures (SST) were found across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. SST values across many of these regions ranged from between one and two Celsius degrees below normal across this region. Consequently, the CPC forecasters still maintained their La Niña advisory, as they envision a continuation of the present weak La Niña conditions through the remainder of Northern Hemisphere winter (December through February) with a transition to a ENSO-neutral conditions beginning during the three-month interval of January through March, 2017; ENSO-neutral means that neither El Niño or La Niña conditions would be anticipated. A technical description of the forecasters' reasoning is provided by the "El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion" [NOAA Climate Prediction Center] An ENSO blog written by a contractor for CPC provides a non-technical description of how the CPC forecasters arrived at their forecast of the next several months where the weak La Niña conditions would begin a transition to ENSO-neutral conditions during late boreal winter and early spring. The blog also has a discussion of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), a large-scale fluctuation in tropical weather on weekly to monthly time scales that moves eastward and how it can affect the impact of the multi-month El Niño or La Niña conditions. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Arctic sea ice is slow to grow with approach of winter -- NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has produced several sets of charts and satellite images documenting the expansion of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean each year since the beginning of satellite surveillance in 1978. After the annual minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in September, the expansion of ice this fall was initially rapid before slowing dramatically, resulting in ice extents setting monthly record low values during October and November. Relatively warm ocean waters apparently are contributing to the slow growth of sea ice through late fall. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Coastal webcam at Barrow, AK monitors Arctic sea ice thickness and sea level -- The Sea Ice Group from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks operates a coastal ice observatory at Barrow, Alaska. The public is invited to visit their web site and monitor their webcam and radar unit for ice thickness conditions and ice movement on the adjacent Chukchi Sea that is a part of the Arctic Ocean. Changes in sea level elevation can also be examined. [US Climate Resilience Toolkit]
Corals should not be on any holiday gift list -- NOAA recently advised against giving coral in the form of jewelry, souvenirs and home decorations as holiday gifts because corals are being seriously threatened by global climate change, unsustainable fishing and pollution. [NOAA News]
Explaining "ocean noise" -- NOAA's National Ocean Service produced a feature that identifies "ocean noise" as being any sounds in ocean waters produced by human activity that would interfere with or obscure the ability of marine animals to hear natural sounds in the ocean. Noise levels in the ocean have been rising over the last century, resulting in negative impacts upon ocean animals and ecosystems. [NOAA National Ocean Service Facts]
Bar is raised on seafood imports to curb illegal fishing and fraud -- Late this past week NOAA Fisheries officials announced the establishment of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program designed to trace specific fish and fish products from harvest to entry into U.S. commerce. This action is meant to demonstrate the federal government's commitment to curbing Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing practices and the establishment of additional protections for the national economy, global food security, and the sustainability of ocean resources. [NOAA News]
Hurricane intensity forecasts could be improved through study of sea spray -- A research team from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science has been studying sea spray droplets generated by breaking waves to help improve forecasting of tropical cyclones. They found that in high wind conditions the amount of large sea spray droplets (diameters exceeding 0.5 millimeters) generated was as much as 1000 times more than previously thought. The researchers think that evaporation of sea spray contributes to the transfer of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, which would accelerate winds in a storm, potentially impacting its intensity. [University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science News]
Ocean health receives "mixed results" -- The University of California Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and the nonprofit Conservation International recently produced its 2016 Ocean Health Index (OHI) that is an annual evaluation of the biological, physical, economic and social aspects of global ocean health. The OHI is calculated using existing global data for 220 countries and territories, the Antarctic region and 15 sections of the high seas. This 2016 OHI study shows no significant declines in the health of the oceans over the last year, but with few real improvements. [University of California Santa Barbara News]
Greenland's Ice Sheet appears to have nearly disappeared to bedrock for a time during Pleistocene -- A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Penn State University, the Berkeley Geochronology Center, Purdue University, the University at Buffalo and the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory recently reported that their analysis of rock drilled from nearly miles below the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet showed the ice may have nearly disappeared for at least 280,000 years during the last 1.4 million years, which is during the Pleistocene epoch. Their finding suggests that the Greenland Ice Sheet may be more vulnerable than previously thought. [Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory News]
East Greenland Ice Sheet has responded to changing climate during the last 7.5 million years -- A team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of Vermont, Boston College and the United Kingdom's Imperial College London has discovered that East Greenland has experienced deep and ongoing glacial erosion over the last 7.5 million years, as based on their analysis of marine sediment cores off the Greenland coast containing isotopes of aluminum and beryllium. Their reconstruction of the past ice sheet erosion dynamics may provide some implications as to how much the ice sheet will respond to future interglacial warming. [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory News]
An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA's National Weather Service, FAA and FEMA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAA/NWS Daily Briefing]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Historical Events:

12 December 1966...A Greek passenger ferry foundered in heavy seas near Heraklion, Crete with the loss of 241 lives.
13 December 1577...Five ships and 164 men under the command of English seaman Francis Drake (later knighted) set sail from Plymouth, England, to embark on Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, the first by a British explorer. The journey took almost three years. (The History Channel)
13 December 1642...Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman became the first European explorer to sight the South Pacific island group now known as New Zealand. (The History Channel)
13 December 1816...The first US patent for a dry dock was issued to John Adamson of Boston, MA. (Today in Science History)
13 December 1879...The first federal fish-hatching steamer was launched at Wilmington, DE.
14 December 1287...Zuider Zee seawall in the Netherlands collapsed with the loss of over 50,000 lives. (Wikipedia)
14 December 1902...The British Cable Ship Silverton set sail from the San Francisco Bay Area to lay the first telephone cable between San Francisco and Honolulu. The project, which involved laying a cable across 2277 nautical miles, was completed by 1 January 1903 as the ship landed and the first test message sent the same day. (Today in Science History)
14 December 1988...The first transatlantic underwater fiber-optic cable went into service.
14 December 1991...A ferry, the Salem Express, carrying 569 passengers sank in the Red Sea off the coast of Safaga, Egypt, after hitting a coral reef. Over 460 people were believed drowned.
14 December 2002...Carrying 2,862 Volvos, BMWs, and SAABs, the Norwegian car transporter ship Tricolor collided with another ship due to thick fog and sank off the coast of Dunkirk, France. (National Weather Service files)
15 December 1488...Bartholomeus Diaz returned to Portugal after sailing round Cape of Good Hope.
15 December 1582...The Spanish Netherlands, Denmark and Norway adopted the Gregorian calendar.
15 December 1965...The third cyclone of the year killed another 10,000 people at the mouth of the Ganges River, Bangladesh.
15 December 1987...High seas to 12-foot heights caused in part by 30-mph winds associated with an arctic cold front capsized a fishing boat in the coastal waters near California's Channel Islands. The ship's cargo shifted in the high seas and strong winds. Three of the nine people onboard drowned. (Accord's Weather Calendar)
15 December 1992...Cyclone John hit the sparsely populated northwest coast of Australia with winds gusting to 185 mph. John was the strongest cyclone to hit Australia in over 100 years. (National Weather Service files)
16 December 1897...The Argonaut, the first US submarine with an internal combustion engine, was demonstrated on the Patapsco River. Simon Lake invented and patented the engine. (Today in Science History)
16-17 December 1997...Torrential rain from Super Typhoon Paka fell on Guam with nearly 21 inches of rain observed at Tiyan before instrumentation failed two hours before Paka's eye passed to the south. Winds gusted to 171 mph before wind instruments failed. However, unofficial sources at Andersen Air Force Base believed that wind gusts may have reached 236.7 mph during the height of the storm. This super typhoon left major damage to 60 percent of the homes on Guam and caused 500 million dollars in damage. Fortunately, no one was killed and only two injuries were reported. (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Calendar)
16 December 2000...NASA announced that an ocean was most likely located beneath the icy surface of the Jovian moon Ganymede. (Wikipedia)
17-18 December 1832...The HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin onboard rounded Cape San Diego at Tierra del Fuego (the southern tip of South America) then sailed through the Strait of Le Maire, to anchor at Good Success Bay and visit Vurland.
17-18 December 1944...A typhoon with wind gusts to 142 mph in the Philippine Sea devastated Task Force 38 of Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet northeast of Samar. Approximately 800 men were lost, the destroyers USS Hull, USS Monaghan and USS Spence sank, while 21 other ships were damaged, along with loss of 147 aircraft. The wind and sea tore life vests from the backs of some survivors. (Naval Historical Center) (Accord's Weather Calendar)