Weekly Ocean News

WEEK ELEVEN: 18-22 November 2013

Items of Interest

A Long Polar Night -- After being above the horizon for only 54 minutes this Monday, the sun set at 1:39 PM Alaska Standard Time (18 November 2013) at Barrow, the northernmost city in Alaska, for the last time this year. The next time the sun will rise above the local horizon in Barrow will be at 1:28 PM AST on 22 January 2014. On that date, the sun will remain above the horizon for 23 minutes. While the sun will be below the horizon for the next 65 days, residents of this city will have roughly three hours of some diffuse sunlight each day that is equivalent to civil twilight, provided the cloud cover is not too thick. To check the sunrise and sunset times of Barrow or any location in the United States go to the US Naval Observatory's on-line, interactive service for the entire year.
Celebrate Geography Awareness Week and GIS Day -- This upcoming week (17-23 November 2013) has been identified as Geography Awareness Week. National Geography Awareness Week, launched by presidential proclamation in 1987, is designed to draw attention to geo-literacy and "the importance of geographic understanding in ensuring our nation's economic competitiveness, national security, environmental sustainability, and the livability of our communities in the 21st century." Since 2013 is the National Geographic Society’s 125th Birthday, this year's Geography Awareness Week theme is "Geography and The New Age of Exploration!" and focuses on how geography enables each person to be an intrepid explorers in a personal way.
In conjunction with Geography Awareness Week, this coming Wednesday (20 November 2013) has been designated GIS Day that commenced in 1999 "provides an international forum for users of geographic information systems (GIS) technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in our society." This year's theme "Discovering the World Through GIS." [GIS Day]
"ClimateChangeLive" distance learning adventure webinar scheduled for this week -- The fourth in a series of seven webinars will be available between 7:30 and 9:00 PM this coming Wednesday, 20 November 2013. The series of webinars is designed to raise awareness and understanding of climate change science and is aligned to national science education standards. The collection of science-based, climate education resources and programs have been gathered from at least 19 federal agency and NGO partners that include the US Forest Service, NOAA, the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The fourth webinar scheduled for this Wednesday is "ClimateChangeLIVE Education Resources Highlights – Part 1." Check http://climatechangelive.org/ for registration details.
Species dominance and ocean properties -- Discover how variations in both the physical and chemical properties of ocean waters can be accompanied by changes in the dominance of the various species of marine life in this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth.

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics --- Tropical cyclone activity across the world's tropical ocean basins diminished last week after major activity across the western North Pacific and North Indian Oceans during the previous week:

No named tropical cyclones developed last week over the North Atlantic basin (that includes the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico) or the eastern North Pacific basin (east of 140 degrees West longitude).
In the western North Pacific basin, the former Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall along the northern coast of Vietnam at the start of last week, having weakened from a category 5 typhoon (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) as it traveled across the central Philippines to a category 1 typhoon while traveling to the west-northwest and then to the northwest across the South China Sea. Upon landfall, Haiyan quickly weakened to a tropical storm and then to a remnant low. The NASA Hurricane Page also has additional information and satellite imagery on this former super typhoon.
Near the midpoint of last week, Tropical Storm Podul formed over the South China Sea from a tropical depression that had formed during the previous week to the southeast of the western Pacific island nation of Palau. Tropical Storm Podul traveled westward and made landfall along the central coast of Vietnam.
In the North Indian Ocean basin, Tropical Storm 3A mad landfall at the start of last week along the coast of the eastern African nation of Somalia before dissipating over eastern Ethiopia. Winds ranged between 30 to 60 mph and between four to eight inches of rain created widespread flooding. Nearly 300 people died because of this tropical cyclone, which was only the fifth tropical cyclone to make landfall in Somalia since 1966. The NASA Hurricane Page has more information and satellite images for Tropical Storm 3A.

Additional views of Super Typhoon Haiyan --

Using radar data obtained from the Italian Space Agency's COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation, a new 27-by 33 mile map was generated by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency that covers a region near Tacloban City in the Philippines hardest hit by by Super Typhoon Haiyan. This new map is designed to assist in disaster response efforts by showing those regions hit hardest by the super typhoon. NASA is making the data publicly available for agencies that might be responding to the event through the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center's Hazards Data Distribution System, as well as through NASA's ARIA website. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Additional new satellite images of Super Typhoon Haiyan were recently obtained from NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and the Indian Space Research Organization's OceanSAT-2 ocean wind scatterometer. [NOAA News]
A map of ocean surface winds generated by Super Typhoon Haiyan during the morning of 7 November 2013 (local time) over the waters of the Philippine Sea between Palau and Mindanao was produced from data collected by the dual-beam rotating scatterometer on the Indian Space Research Organization's Oceansat-2 satellite. The scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory determined that the maximum sustained winds had reached 128 mph. [NASA Earth Observatory]
A side-by-side comparison was made between Super Typhoon Haiyan and Hurricane Katrina, a deadly hurricane that made landfall along the Louisiana coast as a category 3 hurricane and was responsible for more than 1830 fatalities and much damage in the New Orleans metropolitan area. [The Washington Post Capital City Weather Gang]

New fisheries survey vessel delivered -- NOAA took delivery of the Fisheries Survey Vessel Reuben Lasker from its Wisconsin builder last week in Norfolk, VA. This 208-foot ship is the agency's newest high-tech fisheries survey vessel and will primarily support fish, marine mammals and turtle surveys off the US West Coast and in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. [NOAA News]
Regulations announced to protect marine mammals during naval exercises in Atlantic and Gulf waters -- Late last week, officials with NOAA Fisheries announced the final regulations that would require the US Navy to implement protective measures designed to reduce adverse effects on marine mammals during training and testing activities in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. [NOAA News]
Visualizing the distribution of nutrients in deep waters of eastern Pacific Ocean -- Two maps that were produced as part of NOAA View shows the concentrations of dissolved phosphate at the ocean surface and at a depth of 500 meters across the eastern half of the North and South Pacific Oceans. These maps show distinct differences in the phosphate concentrations in different layers of the ocean that are associated with strong upwelling of nutrient-laden water off the western coast of North and South America. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
Improvement made in monitoring Great Lakes ice from space -- Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory have created a new technique for monitoring the ice cover of the Great Lakes based upon satellite radar units onboard the Canadian Space Agency's RADARSAT-1/2, the European Space Agency's European Remote Sensing Satellite 2 (ERS-2), and Envisat. This method is sufficiently precise that it can accurately identify a narrow channel of water cut in the lake ice by an icebreaker. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Giant iceberg calves off Antarctic glacier -- Over the previous weekend, a large iceberg (identified as Iceberg B-31) separated from the front of Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier and was moving away from the coast as documented by the Operational Land Imager on NASA's Landsat 8 satellite. The dimensions of Iceberg B-31 are roughly the same size as Singapore or New York City's Manhattan Island. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Researchers at the United Kingdom's University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre will track the iceberg and attempt to predict its path using satellite data. [National Oceanography Centre]
Ocean acidification monitored by new generation of micro sensors -- Engineers and scientists from the United Kingdom's University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Center have developed and successfully tested a new and cost-effective micro sensor for long-term monitoring of ocean acidification. A computer chip in the micro sensor measures the pH, a measure of the acidity of the ocean water. The goal is to make in-situ measurements of ocean acidity over time as increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are dissolved in the ocean waters. [National Oceanography Centre]
Ancient seawater body identified under Chesapeake Bay -- Hydrologists from the US Geological Survey (USGS) have identified a body of high-salinity groundwater that was discovered more than 1000 meters below Chesapeake Bay along the US East Coast represents remnant water from the Early Cretaceous North Atlantic Sea and is probably 100-145 million years old. This sizeable body of seawater, which is the oldest to be identified worldwide, apparently was preserved until present by a massive comet or meteorite that struck the area approximately 35 million years ago, creating Chesapeake Day, the nation's largest estuary. [USGS Newsroom]
Link made between changes in global precipitation patterns and human-induced changes in climate -- Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have demonstrated that observed changes in the global distribution of precipitation over land and ocean are directly affected by human activity and cannot be explained solely by natural variability in weather and climate. The researchers point to the release of gases by humans that are both heat trapping and ozone depleting. The increased atmospheric concentrations would result in thermodynamic changes where increased temperatures would increase precipitation over wet areas and decrease precipitation over dry areas. In addition, the increased levels of these gases would also change large scale atmospheric circulation patterns that would displace storm tracks and subtropical dry zones toward the poles in each hemisphere. The researchers made comparisons between climate model predications with the global observations from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project between 1979-2012. [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory News]
New satellite designed to improve weather forecasts -- A new satellite, called the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory satellite, is scheduled to be launched in February 2014 that will create a unified international weather data system designed to provide precipitation updated from around the globe every three hours. This satellite, which represents a partnership between NASA and Japan's space agency JAXA, will build upon the successes of and the data collected by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, also a collaboration between these two agencies, that was launched in 1997. This new satellite, the largest assembled at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, will have a GPM Microwave Imager and the Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar. The goal of the GPM is to provide sufficiently accurate precipitation data that will help meteorologists make more accurate predictions during severe weather, as well as improved local weather forecasts. [Popular Mechanics]
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]
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 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:

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)
23 November 1869...The clipper ship, the Cutty Sark, was launched at Dumbarton, Scotland. This three-masted and 212-foot long ship was one of the last clipper ships to be built and is the only one surviving to the present day, residing in a dry dock at Greenwich, England. (Wikipedia)
23-24 November 1981...Typhoon Irma, the worst in 10 years, struck north central Philippines (mostly Luzon) with winds to 139 mph and a storm surge of 16 feet. More than 236 people died, while 600,000 were made homeless. Entire provinces were left without power or communication. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
24 November 1982...Hurricane Iwa lashed the Hawaiian Islands of Niihau, Kauai, and Oahu with high winds and surf. Winds gusting to 120 mph caused extensive shoreline damage. Winds at Honolulu gusted to 81 mph. Damage totaled 150 million dollars on Kauai, and fifty million dollars on Oahu. The peak storm surge on the south shore was six to eight feet. It marked the first time in 25 years that Hawaii had been affected by a hurricane. (The Weather Channel)