WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

14-18 December 2015

DataStreme Ocean will return for Spring 2016 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 18 January 2016. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Ocean News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

Items of Interest:

• Student scholarships announced -- The NOAA Office of Education recently announced that scholarships are available to undergraduate and graduate students who are majoring in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences, along with several of the other scientific and technical disciplines that support NOAA's mission and programs. [NOAA Office of Education] These scholarships include:
• Educational Partnership Program (EPP) Undergraduate Scholarship: http://www.epp.noaa.gov/ssp_undergrad_page.html. This program provides an opportunity for rising junior students to study disciplines relating to the NOAA's mission. Students attending Minority Serving Institutions are encouraged to apply. The application deadline for the 2016 EPP Undergraduate Scholarship Program is 29 January 2016.
• Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship Program: http://www.oesd.noaa.gov/scholarships/hollings.html. This program is designed to: (1). increase undergraduate training in oceanic and atmospheric science, research, technology, and education and foster multidisciplinary training opportunities; (2) increase public understanding and support for stewardship of the ocean and atmosphere and improve environmental literacy; (3.) recruit and prepare students for public service careers with NOAA and other natural resource and science agencies at the federal, state and local levels of government; and (4.) recruit and prepare students for careers as teachers and educators in oceanic and atmospheric science and to improve scientific and environmental education in the United States. The application deadline for the 2016 Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship Program is 29 January 2016.
• Next Geostationary Operational Environmental Series satellite to be launched in October 2016 -- During the last week, the date for launching the nation's next Geostationary Operational Environmental Series (GOES) satellite, identified as GOES-R, has been tentatively set for October 2016, following extensive review by engineers and scientists at NOAA, NASA and Lockheed Martin. Two new animations ("I'm GOES-R" and "Getting GOES-R to orbit"), each of 2-minute length, have been prepared that describe this new GOES-R satellite and are recommended to K-12 educators for use in their classrooms by Ron Gird, the NOAA-National Weather Service's Outreach Program Specialist. [NOAA NESDIS News Archive]

Ocean in the News:

• Eye on the tropics --- Tropical cyclone activity was limited to two ocean basins last week:
• In the western North Pacific Ocean basin, Typhoon Melor formed at the beginning of this past weekend as a tropical depression near the island of Yap in the Caroline Islands. By late Sunday (local time), Melor had intensified to become a category 4 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as it traveled to the west-northwest and approached to a position that was 425 miles to the east-southeast of Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. Melor was forecast to travel across the southern sections of the Philippine Island of Luzon early this week. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite imagery on Tropical Storm Melor.
  
• In the South Indian Ocean basin, Tropical Storm Bohale formed late last week approximately 500 miles to the south of Diego Garcia. This weak tropical storm traveled toward the south-southwest before weakening and dissipating tropical depression approximately 48 hours after formation. Satellite images and additional information on Tropical Storm Bohale can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
• Initial outlook for 2016 Atlantic hurricane season issued -- Last week Philip J. Klotzbach, his mentor Professor Bill Gray, and other colleagues at Colorado State University issued a qualitative discussion of what they foresee as factors that should determine next year's Atlantic basin hurricane activity. The main uncertainty they feel that surrounds their forecast for the 2016 Atlantic basin hurricane season involves how fast the current strong El Niño event would weaken. Furthermore, the current phase of one of their assessment tools, the Atlantic Decadal Oscillation (AMO), has a high level of uncertainty. They are using two primary physical parameters in their outlooks: (1.) the strength of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation or the AMO and (2.) the phase of ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation). The team plans on issuing their first quantitative forecast in mid-April 2016. Details of their initial qualitative assessment appear in the report issued by the Tropical Meteorology Project. [Colorado State University Report]
  
• Historic Paris climate change agreement reached -- This last Saturday at the end of the 2015 Climate Conference (COP21), nearly 200 nations signed on to a 31-page global climate agreement. View a 4-minute final News of the Day video. [Green TV]
  An artistic tribute to climate science was apparent in Paris during the last two weeks, which played host to the (COP21) Conference. The tribute was in the form of 42 panels throughout Paris's Gare du Nord railway station honoring Dr. Syukuro Manabe, a scientist at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab at Princeton University who was a pioneer of climate modeling and climate science. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
• Historic Paris climate change agreement reached -- This last Saturday at the end of the 2015 Climate Conference (COP21), nearly 200 nations signed on to a 31-page global climate agreement. View a 4-minute final News of the Day video. [Green TV]
  An artistic tribute to climate science was apparent in Paris during the last two weeks, which played host to the (COP21) Conference. The tribute was in the form of 42 panels throughout Paris's Gare du Nord railway station honoring Dr. Syukuro Manabe, a scientist at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab at Princeton University who was a pioneer of climate modeling and climate science. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
• Financial awards made for coral reef conservation -- More than $8.4 million in grants and cooperative agreements have been made by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program in 2015 to support conservation projects and scientific studies in seven states and territories, the Caribbean and Micronesia that are designed to benefit coral reef management. All these projects focus on the three primary threats to coral reefs: global climate change, land-based sources of pollution and unsustainable fishing practices. [NOAA News]
• 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 November 2015. SST values ranged from between two to three Celsius degrees above normal from the central into the eastern equatorial Pacific. Consequently, the CPC forecasters released their monthly El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion in which their El Niño advisory was continued. They envision the current El Niño event to remain strong through this Northern Hemisphere winter (December 2015 through February 2016), followed by a transition to an anticipated ENSO-neutral condition during the late boreal spring or early summer of 2016. [NOAA Climate Prediction Center]
  An ENSO blog written by CPC staff compares this current El Niño event with the one in 1997-1998 that has been considered to be one of the strongest since 1950. While SST values in one of the regions of the Pacific along the Equator (Niño 3.4) for November 2015 were nearly the same as during the record November 1997, the staff noted subtle differences in the response of the winds and the upper ocean heat content between these two events, which would suggest that the 2015 event has not been quite as strong as in 1997. The blog has accompanying graphics showing their comparisons of SST, near-surface winds and upper ocean heat content across the Pacific basin for the current event and the one in 1997-1998. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
• Highlighting the role of satellites in monitoring harmful algal blooms -- NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) highlighted the use of sensors on the agency's polar orbiting environmental satellites (POES) to track harmful algal bloom (HAB) in the waters of the Great Lakes and Gulf of Mexico since 1987. The data obtained from these sensors have been used by NOAA's CoastWatch program and NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) for its Harmful Algal Bloom Operational Forecast System. [NOAA NESDIS News Archive]
• New tool used to determine mercury sources in Great Lakes -- A new tool was developed by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison that can be used by land and resource managers around North America's Great Lakes to distinguish between the various sources of the mercury a toxic chemical that is found in the ecosystem of the Lake basin. Atmospheric mercury has been found to be the dominant source of mercury in Lakes Superior and Huron, while the main mercury sources in Lakes Erie and Ontario appears to come from industry and runoff from watersheds. Lake Michigan has multiple mercury sources, depending upon location. [USGS Newsroom]
• Long-range sea ice prediction model developed -- Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have developed a method for prediction of Arctic sea ice changes in years in advance, based upon how the ice that forms in winter would grow, shrink or remain close to a steady state. They have linked ocean circulation and sea ice, incorporating variations of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) into their model. [NCAR/UCAR AtmosNews]
• Bilateral meetings between NOAA and Environment Canada involve discussions on weather, water and climate changes -- The Director of NOAA's National Weather Service, Dr. Louis Uccellini, and his counterpart, Assistant Deputy Minister and head of Environment Canada's (EC) Meteorological Service, David Grimes, conducted "face-to-face" bilateral meetings this past fall designed to strengthen the collaborative efforts that the United States and Canada are taking on weather, water, climate prediction and research. Topics of mutual concern involve forecast issues across their national borders, shared forecasting challenges related to high-impact weather and seasonal to sub-seasonal prediction and efforts by NOAA and EC in the Arctic. Integrated water prediction over the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River Basin was also discussed. [NOAA Weather-Ready Nation News]
• Explaining ocean acidification and its role as "the evil twin of global warming" -- A biologist and oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory explains ocean acidification and its effects on marine life in a 3-minute video entitled "What is Ocean Acidification." In another 4-minute video "Ancient Shells Hold Clues to Life in a Warmer World" she discusses how scientists use ancient shells collected from the sea floor to track changes in ocean chemistry has changed over millions of years and this chemistry could change in the future. [Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory News]
• Longer days can affect global sea level changes -- A physics professor at the University of Alberta claims that changes in the dynamics of the flow in the Earth's core changes the speed of Earth's rotation that not only changes the length of the day, but also contributes to changes in global sea level. Over the past 3000 years, the flow in the Earth's core has increased, leading to a lengthening of the day along with changes in sea level. [University of Alberta Science News]
• 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]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Historical Events:

• 14 December 1287...Zuider Zee seawall in the Netherlands collapsed with the loss of over 50,000 lives. (Wikipedia)
• 14 December 1902...The British Cable Ship Silverton set sail from the San Francisco Bay Area to lay the first telephone cable between San Francisco and Honolulu. The project, which involved laying a cable across 2277 nautical miles, was completed by 1 January 1903 as the ship landed and the first test message sent the same day. (Today in Science History)
• 14 December 1988...The first transatlantic underwater fiber-optic cable went into service.
• 14 December 1991...A ferry, the Salem Express, carrying 569 passengers sank in the Red Sea off the coast of Safaga, Egypt, after hitting a coral reef. Over 460 people were believed drowned.
• 15 December 1488...Bartholomeus Diaz returned to Portugal after sailing round Cape of Good Hope.
• 15 December 1582...The Spanish Netherlands, Denmark and Norway adopted the Gregorian calendar.
• 15 December 1965...The third cyclone of the year killed another 10,000 people at the mouth of the Ganges River, Bangladesh.
• 15 December 1987...High seas to 12-foot heights caused in part by 30-mph winds associated with an arctic cold front capsized a fishing boat in the coastal waters near California's Channel Islands. The ship's cargo shifted in the high seas and strong winds. Three of the nine people onboard drowned. (Accord's Weather Calendar)
• 16 December 1897...The Argonaut, the first US submarine with an internal combustion engine, was demonstrated on the Patapsco River. Simon Lake invented and patented the engine. (Today in Science History)
• 16-17 December 1997...Torrential rain from Super Typhoon Paka fell on Guam with nearly 21 inches of rain observed at Tiyan before instrumentation failed two hours before Paka's eye passed to the south. Winds gusted to 171 mph before wind instruments failed. However, unofficial sources at Andersen Air Force Base believed that wind gusts may have reached 236.7 mph during the height of the storm. This super typhoon left major damage to 60 percent of the homes on Guam and caused 500 million dollars in damage. Fortunately, no one was killed and only two injuries were reported. (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Calendar)
• 16 December 2000...NASA announced that an ocean was most likely located beneath the icy surface of the Jovian moon Ganymede. (Wikipedia)
• 17-18 December 1832...The HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin onboard rounded Cape San Diego at Tierra del Fuego (the southern tip of South America) then sailed through the Strait of Le Maire, to anchor at Good Success Bay and visit Vurland.
• 17-18 December 1944...A typhoon with wind gusts to 142 mph in the Philippine Sea devastated Task Force 38 of Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet northeast of Samar. Approximately 800 men were lost, the destroyers USS Hull, USS Monaghan and USS Spence sank, while 21 other ships were damaged, along with loss of 147 aircraft. The wind and sea tore life vests from the backs of some survivors. (Naval Historical Center) (Accord's Weather Calendar)
• 19 December 1551...The Dutch west coast was hit by a hurricane.
• 19 December 1741...Vitus J Bering, Dutch navigator/explorer, died on this date.
• 19-21 December 1835...The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin approached New Zealand and sailed into the Bay of Islands.
• 20 December 1987...Worst peacetime shipping disaster occurred as the Dona Paz, a Philippine ferry, sank after collision with oil tanker Vector off Mindoro island, setting off a double explosion. As many as 1749 confirmed deaths, but the death toll was probably closer to 3000.

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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.