Weekly Ocean News

WEEK ELEVEN: 16-20 November 2009

Ocean in the News

Eye on the tropics -- During the last week several tropical cyclones (low pressure systems that form over tropical or subtropical oceans) developed and traveled across tropical waters of the major ocean basins:
- In the North Atlantic basin, Hurricane Ida traveled northward across the Gulf of Mexico early last week, having reached category-2 status (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) after passing through the Yucatan Channel. The hurricane weakened to a tropical storm before making landfall along the Alabama Gulf Coast early Tuesday. However, remnants of this former tropical storm became an extratropical storm that traveled eastward and was absorbed by another midlatitude-low pressure center over the western North Atlantic off the Carolina coast. A more vigorous nor'easter type storm formed and affected the Middle Atlantic coast from late last week through the weekend. For additional information on former Hurricane Ida and the more recently developed nor'easter along with satellite images , consult the NASA Hurricane Page.
- No organized tropical cyclones formed in the eastern North Pacific or central North Pacific basins last week.
- In the North Indian Ocean basin, a tropical cyclone identified as Tropical Storm Phyan formed over the waters of the Arabian Sea early last week. Moving to the north-northeast, this storm made landfall along the western coast of India north of Mumbai by midweek. See additional information and satellite imagery associated with Tropical Storm Phyan on the NASA Hurricane Page
- In the South Indian Ocean basin, Tropical Cyclone Anja formed over the weekend and intensified rapidly to a category 2 cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as it traveled to the southwest.
Real-time hurricane alley movies are available -- The GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has developed real-time HDTV movies of the Atlantic and eastern Pacific "hurricane alleys" along the East and West coasts that provide the public with a new hurricane visualization tool. [NASA GSFC]
Celebrate GIS Day -- This coming Tuesday, 18 November 2009, has been declared GIS Day, an event designed to create geographic awareness around the world using geographic information systems (GIS). This event, with the theme "Discovering the World through GIS", is principally sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the Association of American Geographers, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, the United States Geological Survey, The Library of Congress, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and ESRI. [GIS Day]
Another "smart buoy" is deployed -- NOAA recently deployed the seventh in a series of "smart buoys" at the mouth of Severn River near Annapolis, MD in Chesapeake Bay. This buoy is a part of the Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System that will monitor weather and oceanographic conditions along with water quality in the nation's largest estuary and provide real-time environmental data to the public and scientists. [NOAA News]
El Niño event strengthens -- Sea-level height data collected over the last two weeks by NASA's Topography Mission/Jason-2 oceanography satellite indicate large-scale weakening of the trade winds across the central and western equatorial Pacific during October, suggesting that the current El Niño event continues to strengthen. This El Niño event could provide relief to the Western States where drought conditions prevailed for much of this past year. [NASA JPL] See also NASA JPL Photojournal.
US pushes for increased international protection of bluefin tuna -- Early last week, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Undersecretary of Commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator issued a statement urging the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) to adopt measures that would end overfishing of bluefin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, thereby permitting recovery of this fish species. [NOAA News]
Sediment trails seen in offshore Gulf of Mexico waters -- An image obtained early last week from the MODIS sensor on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows interesting patterns of sediment-laden waters of the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. The sediments that became suspended in the shallow waters of the northwestern Gulf may have been due in part to the waves associated with the landfalling Tropical Storm Ida along the Alabama Gulf Coast, as well as to river runoff coming from above-average October rainfall totals across the Gulf Coast States. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Algae blooms seen off Chilean coast -- A MODIS image obtained early last week from NASA's Terra satellite shows large swirls of algal bloom in the waters of the eastern South Pacific Ocean off the Chilean coast. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Determining the amount of ocean water -- Geoscientists from Germany's University of Bonn, the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and the Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Science have determined the change in water mass in the world's oceans. These researchers used satellite data collected by NASA's GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission. Their calculations should help improve climate models. [EurekAlert!]
Monitoring the "plastic vortex" -- Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography traveled approximately 1000 miles out over the eastern North Pacific last August to the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" as part of SEAPLEX (Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition) to investigate a convergence zone of plastic and other marine debris that has accumulated in the North Pacific Ocean Gyre. [Scripps Institution of Oceanography]
In a related item, a woman in Marin County north of San Francisco has been using the plastic found washed up on her county's beaches from the Pacific gyre to make jewelry. [KGO-TV ABC Channel 7] (Editor's Note Special thanks go to Freida Blink, a long time member of the AMS Education Project, for this news item. EJH)
Controversy arises on carbon cycle -- A researcher at the United Kingdom's University of Bristol claims that recently obtained data would indicate that the balance between the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed in the terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems appears to have remained relatively constant since 1850, despite a significant increase in the annual emissions of carbon dioxide during the last 150 years. He suggests that the oceans and the terrestrial ecosystems would have a much greater capacity to sequester carbon dioxide than previously thought. [University of Bristol]
Retreat of Antarctic glaciers could aid in sequestering carbon dioxide -- Scientists from British Antarctic Survey recently claimed that the melting and retreat of the Antarctic glaciers have permitted more photosynthesis to occur in the waters around Antarctica, which they claim could serve as a new natural "sink" for carbon dioxide, removing an estimated 3.5 million metric tons of carbon from the ocean and atmosphere annually. [EurekAlert!]
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, 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, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

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:

17 November 1820...Captain Nathaniel Palmer, USN, became the first American to see Antarctica. He saw the Palmer Peninsula, which was later named after him. (Wikipedia)
17 November 1869...The Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas, was officially inaugurated in Egypt with an elaborate ceremony. (Wikipedia)
17 November 1973...The "Largest Icebreaker in the Western World," USCGC Polar Star, was launched. (USCG Historians Office)
18 November 1421...Wind-driven waves from an intense storm breached Dutch dikes on the Zuider Zee, sweeping away 72 villages. At least 10,000 people died in "St. Elizabeth's flood." (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
18 November 1929...A magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake centered on the Grand Banks off the south coast of Newfoundland broke 12 transatlantic telegraph cables and triggered a tsunami that destroyed many south coast communities on Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula. (Wikipedia)
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)