7-11 January 2008

DataStreme Ocean will return for Spring 2008 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 14 January 2008. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Ocean News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

• Eye on the Tropics -- The South Indian Ocean was the only basin that experienced tropical cyclone activity last week. Tropical Cyclone Melanie, which developed during the last weekend of 2007 off the northwest coast of Australia, continued to move southwestward into the beginning of last week. A MODIS image from NASA's Aqua satellite shows the clouds surrounding Tropical Cyclone Melanie. [NASA Earth Observatory]
  In the western South Indian Ocean, the ninth tropical storm of the season formed between Madagascar and South Africa on New Years Eve and intensified to become Tropical Cyclone Elnus. This cyclone dissipated by the end of the week. Additional information and an image from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite can be obtained from the NASA Hurricane page.
  Tropical Cyclone Helen, the tenth named cyclone of the season in the southern Indian Ocean, formed over the Gulf of Carpentaria near Australia late last week. As of Sunday, this system was moving east toward Australia's Cape York Peninsula. Additional information can be obtained, including an AIRS image from NASA's Aqua satellite, at the NASA Hurricane page.
• Assessing Katrina's damage continues from space -- Researchers from Tulane University and the University of New Hampshire have used a variety of information including imagery from NASA's Landsat satellite and the MODIS sensors on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites to make an inventory of the damage to the Gulf Coast forests caused by Hurricane Katrina. This study also focused on the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by the damaged forests. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Improvements designed to improve navigation accuracy -- NOAA officials recently announced that the agency's National Geodetic Survey will serve as the Analysis Center Coordinator for the International Global Navigation Satellite Systems Service, by compiling and analyzing satellite orbit data from ten international centers in an effort to increase the accuracy of GPS (global positioning system) data needed for safe navigation. [NOAA News]

• Comments solicited on revised US Climate Change Science Program research plan -- The U.S. Climate Change Science Program recently posted a revised research plan summary on the Internet and in the Federal Register for public review and comment within the next two months. [NOAA News]

• In the wake of a New Year's snowstorm -- A MODIS image from NASA's Aqua satellite made on the day after New Year's Day shows snow cover across the Midwest and Northeast in the wake of snowstorms that traveled across the Midwest and Northeast over the holidays. This image also shows convective clouds that developed across the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico and the western North Atlantic as cold air streamed to the southeast across these relatively warm waters. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Changes in North Atlantic temperatures tied to natural oscillations -- An international team of scientists reports that analysis of 50 years of water temperatures across the North Atlantic indicates that the warming of the surface waters of the Atlantic between 1950 and 2000 was not uniform and also included cooling in subpolar regions, which they explained was caused by natural cyclic changes in the wind circulation patterns called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). They did mention that increases in global temperatures could affect sea surface temperatures elsewhere. [EurekAlert!]
• Two events mark early history of multicellular marine life -- Paleontologists at Virginia Tech have recently identified an explosive evolutionary event called the "Avalon Explosion" at about 575 million years ago that predates the Cambrian Explosion of approximately 542 million years ago, in which early complex animal life exploded in the early Cambrian Period. [EurekAlert!]
• Plate tectonics may stutter -- Researchers at the Carnegie Institute suggest that the geological process of plate tectonics that are responsible for the creation of ocean basins, continents and mountain ranges on the planet's surface may not be continuous throughout Earth history as previously thought, but has undergone interruptions. [EurekAlert!]
• 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]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

• 8 January 1958...The Coast Guard LORAN Station at Johnston Island began transmitting on a 24-hour basis, thus establishing a new LORAN rate in the Central Pacific. The new rate between Johnston Island and French Frigate Shoal gave a higher order of accuracy for fixing positions in the steamship lanes from Oahu, Hawaii, to Midway Island. In the past, this was impossible in some areas along this important shipping route. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 8 January 1971...Twenty-nine pilot whales beached themselves and died at San Clemente Island, CA.
• 8-11 January 1980...Winds, waves and rain pounded Hawaii, resulting in 27.5 million dollars in storm damage, which was the greatest amount to that date in the Aloha State's history. Four houses were destroyed and 40 others damaged by a possible tornado in Honolulu's Pacific Palisades area on the 8^th. Ocean waves with heights to 20 feet entered beachfront hotels along the Kona Coast of the Big Island. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 12 January 1836...Charles Darwin onboard the HMS Beagle reached Sydney, Australia.
• 12 January 1937...A plow for laying submarine cable was issued a U.S. patent. Designed to feed a cable at the same time that it would dig a trench in the ocean bed, the device could be used at depths up to a half mile. The first transatlantic cable of high-speed permalloy was buried on 14 June 1938. The inventors were Chester S. Lawton of Ridgewood, NJ and Capt. Melville H. Bloomer of Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Today in Science History).
• 12 January 1991...A major Atlantic storm intensified over the ocean waters off Newfoundland. Winds reached 105 mph at coastal Bonavista and ocean waves reached heights of 66 feet. A cargo ship sank 250 miles off the southeast Newfoundland coast. This storm was responsible for 33 deaths. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 13 January 1840...The 207-ft long side-wheel steamship Lexington burned and sank in Long Island Sound four miles off the northern coast of New York State's Long Island with the loss of 139 lives. Only four people survived. (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, 2008, The American Meteorological Society.