WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

21-25 December 2009

DataStreme Ocean will return for Spring 2010 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 25 January 2010. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Ocean News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Sincerely,

Ed Hopkins and the AMS DS Ocean Central Staff

Items Of Interest

• Happy Winter Solstice! The winter solstice will occur during the midday hours of Monday (officially, on 21 December 2009 at 1747Z, or 12:47 PM EST, 11:47 AM CST, etc.). At that time, the earth's spin axis will be oriented such that the sun appears to be the farthest south in the local sky of most earth-bound observers. While most of us consider this event to be the start of astronomical winter, the British call that day the "Midwinter Day", as the apparent sun will begin its northward climb again. For essentially all locations in the Northern Hemisphere, Sunday night will be the longest and the daylight on Monday will be the shortest of the year. Starting Tuesday, the length of darkness will begin to shrink as we head toward the summer solstice on 21 June 2010 at 1128Z.

Ocean in the News:

• Eye on the tropics -- During the last week, tropical cyclone activity was found across the tropical waters of the Indian and the western South Pacific Oceans, as the Southern Hemisphere summer season was beginning:
  • In South Indian Ocean, Tropical Cyclone Laurence continued to move southwestward over the coastal waters off the coast of northwestern Australia, making several landfalls along the coast, resulting in strong winds and heavy rains. As of early Monday (local time), Tropical Cyclone Laurence was located northeast of Port Hedland, Australia. For more information and satellite images on Tropical Cyclone Laurence, consult the NASA Hurricane Page
    Over the weekend, Tropical Cyclone 5S formed over the waters of the western South Indian Ocean near Port Louis in the Republic of Mauritius.
  • In western South Pacific Cyclone Mick formed over the previous weekend and moved to the southeast. This category 1 cyclone (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) dissipated by the middle part of last week. Additional information and satellite images on Cyclone Mick can be obtained from the NASA Hurricane Page.
  • In Northern Indian Basin, Tropical Cyclone 5B, also known as Tropical Storm Ward, made landfall on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka and dissipated at the beginning of the week The NASA Hurricane Page has satellite images and additional information on this tropical cyclone.
• Recent advances in tsunami warning highlighted -- With the approach of the fifth anniversary of the infamous Sumatra Indonesia tsunami, which was responsible for the deaths of at least 230,000 people around the Indian Ocean basin, NOAA officials highlighted the efforts undertaken by their agency to establish and improve the international tsunami warning system. [NOAA News]
• Post-tsunami assessment is undertaken in American Samoa -- During the last three weeks, a survey team consisting of NOAA personnel, territorial agency representatives, village mayors, local news outlets and other federal agencies has been surveying the marine debris in and around American Samoa generated by the devastating 29 September 2009 tsunami. [NOAA News]
• "Vertical evacuation" appears best for fleeing a tsunami -- Following an onsite survey of Western Sumatra within two weeks following a major tsunami, engineers at Stanford University have concluded that the best chances for survival of a tsunami would be to quickly move to the upper levels of high buildings rather than attempt to outrun the tsunami wave by traveling inland. [EurekAlert!]
• Alaska's Arctic coast continuing to erode -- Researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the USGS, the Naval Postgraduate School and Stratus Consulting have determined that sections of northern Alaska's Arctic coastline have been eroding at annual rates reaching 45 feet per year because of a combination of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity. These researchers do not foresee an end to this situation in the near future. [University of Colorado]
• Marine hypoxia areas tend to increase during climate warming episodes -- A new study made by Oregon State University researchers of Pacific Ocean sediments collected by the Ocean Drilling Program off Chile's coast indicates that offshore waters experienced hypoxia conditions, or systematic oxygen depletion, during the rapid warming of the Antarctic following the last "glacial maximum" period 20,000 years ago. [Oregon State University]
• Explosive deep-ocean volcano discovered -- Scientists from nearly a dozen of the nation's research institutions who were on a research cruise funded by NOAA and the National Science Foundation discovered and recorded last May's eruption of the West Mata volcano using the American Jason remotely operated underwater vehicle. This volcanic eruption, located southwest of the Samoa Islands, was approximately 4000 feet below the surface of the Pacific, which was the deepest erupting volcano yet discovered. [NOAA News]
• NASA's Terra satellite is 10 years old -- Ten years ago last week, NASA launched its Terra satellite, which was the first of three flagship missions in the agency's Earth Observing System that has been designed to examine the interactions between the atmosphere, land and ocean within the planet Earth system. The Terra satellite, which is in a sun-synchronous orbit about the Earth, can be considered a multi-national, multi-disciplinary mission, as the five instrument packages that it carries were built involving partnerships between the US, Canada and Japan. The five instruments are ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer), CERES (Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System), MISR (Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer), MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere). [NASA JPL] [EurekAlert!] Three graphics show the global distribution of snow cover, cloud fraction and reflected solar radiation obtained from the data collected recently from the MODIS and CERES instruments onboard Terra. [NASA Earth Observatory] Another product obtained from data collected by the ASTER sensor onboard Terra satellite is a new Global Digital Elevation Model that has a spatial resolution ranging between 50 and 300 feet. This model can be used by climate researchers for monitoring climate change. [NASA]
• 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.

Historical Events:

• 21 December 1163...A hurricane hit villages in Holland/Friesland, causing floods.
• 21 December 1872...The HMS Challenger set sail from Portsmouth, England on the 4-year scientific expedition that would lay the foundation for the science of oceanography. (Wikipedia)
• 21 December 1936...Ice breaking operations in channels and harbors by the US Coast Guard was authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Executive Order No. 7521. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 22 December 1832...The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin reached the Barnevelts Islands
• 22 December 1837...Congress authorized the President "to cause any suitable number of public vessels, adapted to the purpose, to cruise upon the coast, in the severe portion of the season, and to afford aid to distressed navigators." This statute was the first authorizing activities in the field of maritime safety, thereby interjecting the national government into the field of lifesaving for the first time. Although revenue cutters were specifically mentioned, the performance of this duty was imposed primarily upon the Revenue Marine Service and quickly became one of its major activities. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 22 December 1894...The Dutch coast was hit by a hurricane.
• 23 December 1811...A cold storm hit Long Island Sound with a foot of snow, gale force winds, and temperatures near zero. During the storm, many ships were wrecked, and in some cases, entire crews perished. (David Ludlum)
• 23 December 1854...A tsunami struck the coast of Japan, with water in the harbor of Simoda changing depth between 8 and 40 feet. Twelve hours later this giant wave reached the Pacific coast of the U.S. The newly installed self-registering tide gauges noted these waves. The information derived from this event enabled Alexander D. Bache, Superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, to apply a newly derived law relating ocean depth to wave speed and provide the first relatively accurate scientific estimate of the depth of an ocean between Japan and the Pacific coast of the U.S. The velocity of the sea wave from Simoda to San Francisco was 369 mph. (Today in Science History)
• 25 December 1492...The Santa Maria, one of the ships that Christopher Columbus used in his historic trans-Atlantic voyage, landed at the Dominican Republic.
• 25 December 1974...Tropical Cyclone Tracy (a hurricane in the waters surrounding Australia) made landfall near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Excellent warnings kept the death toll to between 50 and 60, with more than 20,000 people evacuated in the week following the storm. Some areas were totally devastated. Peak wind speeds reached exceeded 174 mph. (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Calendar)
• 26-31 December 1993...The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race off Australia was plagued by hurricane-force wind gusts in excess of 74 mph and 33 foot high seas. Of 104 starters, only 37 yachts finished the race. On the 28^th, one yacht owner spent five hours in the water after being swept overboard. (Accord's Weather Calendar)
• 26 December 2004...A massive earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter magnitude scale approximately 100 miles off the western coast of Sumatra created a tsunami that caused devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, The Maldives and many other areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean. The death toll is currently estimated at more than 300,000. Officials say the true toll may never be known, due to rapid burials. Indonesia was worst affected with as many as 219,000 people killed. (Wikipedia)
• 27 December 1831...The HMS Beagle, along with the 22-year old British naturalist Charles Darwin, set sail from Plymouth, England on a five-year expedition of the southern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Based upon his study of the flora and fauna of such places as the Galapagos Islands, he developed his famous theory of evolution that was described in his 1859 work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. (The History Channel)
• 27 December 1965...The BP oil rig Sea Gem capsized in the North Sea, with the loss of 13 lives.

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2009, The American Meteorological Society.