10-14 January 2011

DataStreme Ocean will return for Spring 2011 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 17 January 2011. 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 -- No organized tropical cyclone activity was found in any of the world's ocean basins during the past week.
• Flooding in Australia linked to a strong La Niña event -- Scientists claim that the current La Niña event, reportedly the most intense in nearly 50 years, has been a contributing factor in the recent heavy rainfall that has plagued Australia. An image obtained from the ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft portrays the recent extensive flooding in Queensland, Australia.
  An image made from ocean surface topography data over the Pacific Ocean collected by the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 satellite image in late December shows the current status of the La Niña event. [NASA JPL]
  Images obtained from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite in mid December and late last week over southeastern Australia show the flooding that has occurred in Queensland and in New South Wales. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Icebergs seen off the East Antarctica coast -- An image obtained last month from the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) sensor on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite shows icebergs along with sea ice along the Princess Ragnhild Coast in East Antarctica. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• A view of the Great Bahama Banks and tidal flats from space -- A digital photograph taken by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station shows an interesting structure to the tidal flats and the channels along the western coast of Long Island in the Bahama. A portion of the eastern margin of the submerged Great Bahama Bank is also visible. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Methane gas concentrations in Gulf of Mexico returning to near-normal levels -- Researchers from University of California, Santa Barbara and Texas A&M University recently reported finding methane gas concentrations in the Gulf of Mexico appear to have returned to near normal levels within 120 days following a massive gas release occurred following last April's Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. They think that the action of bacterial blooms was responsible for consuming the immense methane gas plumes observed within the first month following the disaster. [University of California, Santa Barbara, Public Affairs]
• Studies of reef damage in Gulf of Mexico undertaken to assess cause -- During the last month, a team of scientists from the US Geological Survey and several universities have collected and begun analyzing samples of coral and surrounding sediments from an area in the Gulf of Mexico near the Deepwater Horizon site in an effort to investigate how and why the corals on the reefs died. [USGS Newsroom]
• Thriving mesophotic reefs found off Puerto Rico -- A NOAA-funded team of scientists from the University of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean Coral Reef Institute and the University of North Carolina Wilmington have found that extensive and biologically diverse coral ecosystems exist in the coastal waters of the Caribbean off the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico. The depth of these light-dependent "mesophotic" (middle light) reefs ranges between 100 to 500 feet. [NOAA News]
• Shipwreck of War of 1812 hero discovered off Rhode Island --Divers from Connecticut report that they have discovered the remains of the USS Revenge, a ship commanded by US Navy hero Oliver Hazard Perry that was wrecked and sank in the Atlantic waters off Rhode Island during heavy fog on 9 January 1811. [USA Today]
• Marine and weather forecast models improved for the Great Lakes -- NOAA officials recently announced that the Great Lakes Operational Forecast System of NOAA’s National Ocean Service is now being run on the powerful and reliable super computers of NOAA's National Weather Service to provide improved marine and weather forecasts on the five Laurentian Great Lakes. These models, which will extend forecasts from 36 hours to 60 hours into the future, are designed to better serve many users including the public, mariners, emergency responders and water resource managers. In addition to wind and wave forecasts, predictions of currents, water level and water temperature will be made. [NOAA News]
• Oceanic "garbage patch" smaller than portrayed by media -- An oceanographer at Oregon State University claims that the size of the "Great Garbage Patch" or the region of plastic trash floating in the North Pacific Ocean between California and Japan has been grossly exaggerated by the media. Furthermore, he reports that the increases in the amount of plastic have not increased as large as often reported. [Oregon State University]
• Fluctuations in oceanic oxygen presented challenge to early life -- Biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside and their colleagues at other research universities report finding evidence indicating that rapid and large fluctuations in the oxygen levels the ocean appear to be the most likely explanation for what drove the rapid evolutionary turnover found in the fossil record for the Cambrian Period (540 to 488 million years ago). [University of California, Riverside Newsroom]
• New website available to create your own planet -- NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently unveiled the interactive "Extreme Planet Makeover" website. This site allows you to create your very own planet by modifying one or more of five factors deemed critical to the habitability of planets that include distance from a star (sun), size of planet, star type and planet age. [NASA JPL]
• 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.

• 12 January 1836...Charles Darwin onboard the HMS Beagle reached Sydney, Australia.
• 12 January 1937...A plow for laying submarine cable was issued an 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 one 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)
• 15 January 1833...HMS Beagle anchored at Goeree Tierra del Fuego.

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2011, The American Meteorological Society.