Weekly Ocean News

WEEK ELEVEN: 16-20 November 2015

Items of Interest

• Teachers invited to join the 2016 NOAA Climate Stewards Stewardship Community -- Educators across the United States working with elementary through university-age students are invited to learn more about climate change and climate resilience by applying to become part of the 2016 NOAA Climate Stewards Education Project (CSEP) Stewardship Community. Selected educators who meet project requirements will be eligible for: • Mini-grants up to $2000 to support a climate stewardship action project; • Travel reimbursements to attend select workshops and/or national conferences; • Special professional development opportunities; • Additional monetary and educational resources. Applications are due by midnight PST, Sunday 22 November 2015. To learn more, go to the NOAA Climate Stewards Education Project Web Site
• A Long Polar Night -- After being above the horizon for only 6 minutes this Thursday, the sun set at 1:15 PM Alaska Standard Time (19 November 2015) 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 1:10 PM AST on 23 January 2016. On that date, the sun will remain above the horizon for 59 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.
• Watching a meteor shower -- This year's Leonid meteor showers should peak during the predawn hours of this coming Tuesday night and Wednesday morning (17-18 November 2015). The Leonid meteor showers, which appear to emanate from the constellation Leo, occur in November as Earth passes through the debris trail from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. As many as 15 meteors per hour are expected this year. Fortunately, the moon should not interfere greatly with viewing conditions, even where city lights and clouds do not block the sky. The shower's radiant, or originating point, will be in the eastern sky after sunset and then will shift to the west after local midnight. [Astronomy]
  
• Celebrate Geography Awareness Week and GIS Day -- This upcoming week (15-21 November 2015) 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 the National Geographic Society is celebrating 100 years of cartographic history, this year's Geography Awareness Week theme is "Explore! The Power of Maps."
  In conjunction with Geography Awareness Week, this coming Wednesday (18 November 2015) 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]
• 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.

• Eye on the Tropics -- During the last week tropical cyclones were found in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean basins of the Northern Hemisphere's Indian Ocean:
• In the North Atlantic, Tropical Storm Kate, the eleventh named tropical cyclone of the basin's 2015 hurricane season formed last Monday morning from a tropical depression near the Bahamas. Traveling northward off the coast of the Southeastern United States Kate strengthened and then curved toward the northeast. By early Wednesday, Kate had intensified to become the fourth Atlantic hurricane of 2015 as it was passing to the north of Bermuda. According to the National Hurricane Center, Kate was the latest on record to form that far north in the North Atlantic Ocean. By Thursday, Kate had lost its tropical characteristics as it was racing toward the east-northeast at least 400 miles to the southeast of Newfoundland. Additional information and satellite images for Hurricane Kate are found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
• In the North Indian Ocean Basin, Cyclone Megh, a category 3 tropical cyclone (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale), made its first landfall over Socotra, an island near Yemen, early last week, but then continued toward the west, passing the northern tip of Somalia. Taking a curve toward the west-northwest, Megh made its second landfall over the coast of Yemen last Tuesday before weakening to a remnant low following landfall over mainland Yemen. The NASA Hurricane Page has satellite images and additional information on Tropical Cyclone Megh.
• El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion & El Niño advisory outlook updates released -- Late last week forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) that showed a strong El Niño event continued as sea surface temperatures (SST) were above average across the central and eastern tropical Pacific during October 2015. SST values ranged from between two to three Celsius degrees above normal from the central into the eastern equatorial Pacific [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]. Consequently, the CPC forecasters released their monthly El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion in which they still maintained their El Niño advisory, as they envision the current El Niño event would likely peak during this upcoming Northern Hemisphere winter (December through February), followed by a transition to an anticipated ENSO-neutral condition during the late boreal spring or early summer of 2016. A description of the forecasters' reasoning for the slightly reduced probability levels is provided. [NOAA Climate Prediction Center]
  An ENSO blog written by CPC staff suggests that this current El Niño event is one of the strongest since 1950 as SST values for the three months of August through October 2015 were the second highest on record. These forecasters expect this El Niño event to peak during winter 2015-16 (in the Northern Hemisphere). The blog also accompanying graphics showing how the near-surface and upper tropospheric winds across the Pacific basin in October and early November compare with 30-year averages. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
• Regulations issued to protect marine mammals in Navy's Northwest training and testing area -- NOAA Fisheries recently issued regulations and letters of authorization to the US Navy requiring that they use measures to minimize impacts to marine mammals while conducting training and testing activities in Navy ranges in state waters off Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and northern California. [NOAA Fisheries Newsroom]
• Boaters alerted to migration of right whales near US Atlantic coast -- NOAA Fisheries recently posted an alert to boaters that the endangered North Atlantic right whales appear to be migrating southward along the US Atlantic coast for the winter and that caution should be exercised to give the whales sufficient room to migrate. [NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Office News]
• Faster way to assess ocean ecosystem health discovered -- A team of researchers representing institutions in six different countries including the US has published a study identifying a set of features common to all ocean ecosystems that can be used visually to diagnose the health of the underwater environment and provide responders in coastal communities the ability to respond quickly to the cumulative effects of threats to the ocean ecosystems involving overfishing, pollution, and invasive species. Satellite imagery, fishery surveys, and landings data can be used to produce a visual image of the patterns in the food chain of the ecosystem. A quick response is necessary to increase ocean resilience and sustainability. [NOAA News]
• Changes seen in effect of La Niña upon Hawaiian rainfall and groundwater -- In a joint study by the University of Hawaii, China's Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology and the Honolulu Office of NOAA's National Weather Service, scientists have found that the Aloha State has been receiving less-than-normal precipitation during recent La Niña events. At one time the Hawaiian Islands used to receive above average rainfall during La Niña events, while drought was limited to El Niño events. The researchers found that the relationship between La Niña and rainfall in Hawaii changed in 1983 when changes in the large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns occurred. [University of Hawaii News]
• Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations reach record levels in 2014 -- The World Meteorological Organization recently released its "WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin" describing the state of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere based upon global observations in 2014. This bulletin reported that a 36 percent increase in radiative forcing occurred between 1990 and 2014, which represented a warming effect on the planetary climate, because of the record levels of long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide from industrial, agricultural and domestic activities. The report also highlighted the interaction and amplification effect between rising levels of carbon dioxide and water vapor, a major, but short-lived-greenhouse gas.[World Meteorological Organization Media Centre] [Editor's Note: Special thanks go to Dr. James Brey, Director of the AMS Education Program for forwarding this link. EJH]
• An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA's National Weather Service, FAA and FEMA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAA/NWS Daily Briefing]
• New "Climate Adaptation Leadership Award for Natural Resources" announced -- Late last week an award will recognize outstanding efforts an interagency group of federal, state, and tribal agencies that included NOAA and the US Departments of Interior and Agriculture announced that a new award would be given to individuals or groups in recognition of their outstanding efforts to increase awareness and safeguard the nation's natural resources from the negative effects of climate change. This "Climate Adaptation Leadership Award for Natural Resources" is part of the President's Climate Action Plan and the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy. Individuals or groups can be nominated for this through the first week of January 2016. [NOAA News]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Concept of the Week: Living Coral and El Niño

El Niño episodes of 1982-83 and 1997-1998, the most intense of the 20th 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

1. Most hermatypic corals thrive at an ocean water temperature of [(10) (27)] °C.
2. 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)

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Prepared by DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@aos.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2015, The American Meteorological Society.