WEEKLY WATER NEWS

28 April -2 May 2008

Water in the Earth System will return for Fall 2008 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 25 August 2008. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Water in the News:

• May is National Wetlands Month -- The US Environmental Protection Agency, along with other federal agencies and environmental groups, has announced that May has been designated as American Wetlands Month in an effort to increase public awareness of the importance of protecting and preserving the nation's wetlands. This year's observance is the 18th annual National Wetlands Month. [EPA-Wetlands]
• Eye on the tropics -- Two tropical storms developed over the eastern sections of the South Indian Ocean early last week. By late in the week, both storms had dissipated. The first storm was identified as Tropical Storm Rosie developed to the northwest of Learmonth on the northwestern coast of Australia and traveled to the southeast. An image generated from data collected by the NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite shows the characteristic spiral pattern of rain intensity surrounding the central eye of Rosie. [NASA Hurricane Page]. A more conventional image from the Japanese satellite MTSAT shows the clouds associated with Tropical Storm Rosie [NOAA OSEI] The second tropical storm that developed a day later was Tropical Storm Duraga over the South Indian Ocean to the east-northeast of the Cocos Islands.
• Floods continue in the Lower Mississippi Valley -- A comparison of two images obtained from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite in early April and one week later shows the extent of the near-record flooding of the White River in Arkansas due to the heavy spring rain that fell across the lower Mississippi Valley earlier this month. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• New monitoring network stations designed to accurately measure climate change -- NOAA officials recently announced that the last nine stations in its 114-station U.S. Climate Reference Network (CRN) will be installed by the end of the summer. This network, along with approximately 1000 stations in a modernized Historical Climatology Network (HCN), will accurately monitor temperature and precipitation trends across the nation, helping scientists track changes in climate. [NOAA News]
• La Niña lingers because of a larger periodic event -- Oceanographers and climatologists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory report that recent sea-level height data collected by the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite indicates that the current La Niña event is slowly weakening, but could linger across the equatorial Pacific Ocean because of the concurrent development of a cold phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that covers much of the Pacific Basin. [NASA]
• Chesapeake Bay recovery is aided by satellite surveillance - Researchers and land managers are using a variety of environmental data collected from the NASA fleet of satellites that includes Landsat, Aqua and Terra to assist in the determination of sources of pollutants entering Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary, and in ways to manage this valuable ecosystem in order to help it recover. [NASA]
• Web tool shows airborne earth science mission -- NASA researchers have developed a Web tool called "The Real Time Mission Monitor" that assembles the data collected from all research satellites, aircraft and surface sensors used in a particular scientific field experiment and displays an overview of the mission superimposed upon Google Earth. One of the missions that just concluded this past week was the spring deployment of Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) from Fairbanks, AK; a summer deployment will be held in late June and early July at Cold Lake, Alberta. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Satellite to test soil moisture -- A professor at Iowa State University is helping the European Space Agency develop a microwave radiometer instrument that would be carried on one the Agency's forthcoming Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite that would detect soil moisture around the world. [EurekAlert!]
• Desalination efforts need continuing research -- A new report issued by the National Research Council cautioned that while new technology advances have made desalination of seawater and brackish groundwater a more feasible option, additional coordinated research efforts must continue to minimize the environmental impacts of desalination, as well as further reducing energy demands and costs. [The National Academies]
• Water quality can be improved with herbicide tolerant crops -- US Department of Agriculture scientists at USDA Agricultural Research Service's North Appalachian Experimental Watershed report that corn and soybeans genetically modified and more herbicide-tolerant appear to allow the use of more environmentally benign herbicides, resulting in an improvement of water quality. [American Society of Agronomy]
• Better crop management could yield a healthier Gulf -- A research team headed by a scientist with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has concluded that improved management of crops in the nation's interior could help alleviate the hypoxia problem in the Gulf of Mexico, where exceedingly low oxygen levels caused by fertilizer in riverine runoff have resulted in large "dead zones" with millions of dead fish and shellfish. [Oak Ridge National Laboratory]
• Ocean current "stripes" detected -- An international team of scientists, including those from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Hawaii, have detected a stripped pattern of near-surface ocean currents running across the world's ocean basins based upon their analysis of more than 20-years of records collected by NOAA's Global Drifter Program and by satellites. The discovery of these subtle ocean currents could help dramatically improve climate forecasts. [Scripps News]
• Summer sun could be increasing vulnerability of Arctic sea ice -- Scientists with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Colorado State University using radar and lidar data collected from NASA's "A-Train" fleet of satellites have found that increased sunshine levels because of fewer clouds across the Arctic during the summer of 2007 appear to have contributed to last summer's record shrinkage of the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean. [UCAR/NCAR]
• Antarctic deep water could be getting colder -- Ocean temperatures obtained by Germany's Alfred Wegner Institute's Research Vessel Polarstern, together with satellite images of Antarctic sea ice, indicate that the deep sea around Antarctica has gotten colder and sea ice expanded to a record extent, suggesting a stimulation in the circulation of water masses. [Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research]
• Martian glaciers indicate an active climate -- Scientists at Brown University who have been examining the glacial ice features found on high-resolution images obtained by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter conclude that the climate of Mars has been more dynamic over a more recent time span than previously thought. [Brown University]
• 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]
• Global Water News Watch -- Other water news sources can be obtained through the SAHRA Project at the University of Arizona [SAHRA Project]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

• 28 April 1973...The all-time record crest of the Mississippi River at St. Louis, MO was recorded at 43.3 ft, exceeding the former 1884 mark by 1.9 ft. (Intellicast)
• 29 April 1905...A thunderstorm dumped 2 in. of rain in ten minutes on the town of Taylor, in southeastern Texas, with a total of 2.35 in. of rain in fifteen minutes. (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
• 29 April 1910...North America's deadliest rock slide was caused by snowmelt followed by temperatures near zero degrees Fahrenheit that caused water in the rock joints under Turtle Mountain in the Canadian Rockies to freeze and expand. Ninety million tons of limestone fell some 3000 ft onto Frank, AB. As many as 70 people died as the result of the rockslide. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 29 April 1973...The Mississippi River reached a crest of 43.4 ft at St. Louis, MO, breaking the previous record of 42 ft established in 1785. (David Ludlum)
• 30 April 1888...World's deadliest hailstorm occurred at Moradabad, India as enormous hailstones killed 230 persons and many livestock. An additional 16 people died in another town. (The Weather Doctor)
• 30 April 1988...The Australian coast between Wollongong and Sydney received 9.8 inches of rain in a 24-hour period that caused landslides and washed out roads and rail tracks. (The Weather Doctor)
• 30 April 1991...Southeast Bangladesh was devastated by a tropical cyclone with sustained winds of approximately 150 mph during the early morning. A 20- ft storm surge inundated offshore islands south of Chittagong, taking water from the Bay of Bengal inland for miles. This cyclone resulted in up to 200,000 deaths and $1.4 billion damage. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 1 May 1986...Hailstones up to 11 pounds were reported in China, resulting in the deaths of 16 people and injuries to 125. (The Weather Doctor)
• 1 May 1854...After 66 hours of steady rain, the Connecticut River reached a level of nearly twenty-nine feet (28 feet 10.5 inches) at Hartford, CT (the highest level of record until that time). The record height was reached in the midst of a great New England flood that followed sixty-six hours of steady rain. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
• 1 May 1883...At Cape Lookout, NC, a storm tide swept over the island drowning sheep and cattle. (Intellicast)
• 3 May 1761...Large tornadoes swept the Charleston, SC harbor when a British Fleet of 40 sails was at anchor. It raised a wave 12 feet high, leaving many vessels on their beam-ends. Four people drowned. (Intellicast)

Return to DataStreme WES Website

Prepared by AMS WES Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2008, The American Meteorological Society.