Weekly Ocean News

5-9 November 2018

For Your Information

Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2018 Campaign for November is underway -- eleventh in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2018 will commence continue through Thursday, 8 November. GLOBE at Night is a worldwide, hands-on science and education program designed to encourage citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of their night sky by matching the appearance of a constellation with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. These constellations are Perseus in the Northern Hemisphere and Grus for the Southern Hemisphere. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. The twelfth and last series in the 2018 campaign is scheduled for 29 November-8 December 2018. [GLOBE at Night]
World Tsunami Awareness Day -- The United Nations General Assembly has designated Monday, 5 November 2018, as World Tsunami Awareness Day in recognition of the hazards that tsunamis pose around the globe. This year, World Tsunami Awareness Day will be aligned with the International Day for Disaster Reduction and the "Sendai Seven Campaign" and will focus on Target "c" of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which aims at reducing direct disaster economic loss in relation to GDP. [United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction]
Free admission into the National Parks -- The National Park Service has designated Veterans Day (Sunday, 11 November 2018) as being a part of its fee-free days program, which in this case is to honor the nation's veterans. This fee waiver will cover entrance and commercial tour fees in many of the national parks and monuments administered by the Park Service. [National Park Service Fee Free Days] Special observances for veterans will be held at several military parks, battlefields and historic sites. [National Park Service Military Honor]
The cause of seasickness is explained -- NOAA's National Ocean Service has posted a useful feature that explains what causes seasickness. This unpleasant experience comes from a conflict in a person's inner ear, where the mechanism responsible for human balance resides. This conflict is caused by the erratic motions of the vessel upon which the person is riding. Suggestions are provided to help minimize the unpleasantness. [NOAA National Oceans Service Ocean Facts]
Hydrothermal vent organisms -- You are invited to read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth that describes how geoscientists have investigated the deep-sea environment in the vicinity of hydrothermal vents that form along the oceanic ridges nearly 3000 meters below the ocean surface. Interestingly, a diverse and abundant community of marine organisms has been found to live in these extreme oceanic conditions.

Ocean in the News:

Several tropical cyclones were reported across the waters of the Northern Hemisphere during the last week:
- In the North Atlantic basin:
  Hurricane Oscar was a minimal category 1 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) early last Monday morning as it was heading toward the west, approximately 620 miles to the southeast of Bermuda. Over the course of Monday, Oscar continued strengthening as it began curving to the northwest and then to the north, becoming a category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained surface winds of 105 mph by late Monday evening. At that time, Hurricane Oscar was approximately 515 miles to southeast of Bermuda, as this storm was traveling to the north. The central eye of Oscar passed nearly 500 miles to the east of Bermuda late Tuesday afternoon, as this hurricane weakened. forecast to strengthen on Monday and into Tuesday as it would head to the west and then northwest, without becoming a threat to any landmasses. As of early Wednesday evening, Hurricane Oscar lost its tropical characteristics, becoming a hurricane-force post-tropical cyclone as it was heading to the north-northeast approximately 540 miles to the south-southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland, or 975 miles to the northeast of Bermuda. At that time, Bermuda was still experiencing high ocean swell generated by Oscar. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite images for Hurricane Oscar.
- In the eastern North Pacific basin:
  A tropical depression formed last Friday afternoon over the waters of the eastern Pacific approximately 450 miles to the southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. Traveling toward the east-northeast, this tropical depression quickly intensified to become Tropical Storm Xavier by Friday evening. Xavier became the 22nd named tropical cyclone of 2018 in the basin and it was the first tropical storm with an "X" name on the Eastern Pacific naming lists since 1992 (when the last named storm was Tropical Storm Zeke that formed in late October of that year). Xavier continued strengthening on Saturday as it traveled toward the east-northeast and then to the northeast. By Sunday morning, Xavier had turned toward the north, as torrential rains from this tropical storm spread onshore across southwestern Mexico. As of Sunday evening, Tropical Storm Xavier was traveling to the north off the coasts of the Mexican States Colima and Jalisco with little change in intensity. At the time, the center of Xavier was located approximately 100 miles to the west-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. Locally heavy rains and gusty winds were continuing over southwestern Mexico. Xavier was expected to turn toward the northwest and then west-northwest on Monday, with a projected track that would keep Xavier offshore of Mexico. Weakening should occur, with Xavier expected to become a remnant low on Tuesday.
- In western North Pacific Basin:
  The former Super typhoon Yutu was traveling toward the west-southwest as a major category 3 typhoon (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) last Monday toward Luzon Island in the Philippines. Yutu made landfall on the eastern coast of Luzon as a category 2 typhoon on Tuesday. Traveling westward across Luzon, Yutu weakened to a tropical storm before moving out over the South China Sea. Torrential rains accompanying Yutu resulted in landslides and mudslides across sections of Luzon, with the loss of as many as 15 people as of Thursday. Yutu curved toward the northwest and weakened to a tropical depression. Eventually Yutu dissipated by early Saturday approximately 175 miles to the southeast of Hong Kong. Satellite images and additional information for Super typhoon Yutu are available on the NASA Hurricane Blog Page.
Funding is awarded to support aquaculture research around the nation -- NOAA officials recently announced that 22 research grants were being awarded a total of $11 million to support projects designed to advance the development of a sustainable marine and coastal aquaculture industry across the nation. These projects include public-private partnerships and will be led by university-based Sea Grant programs in 15 states. [NOAA Sea Grant News]
A beach watch citizen science program celebrates 25 years in California -- NOAA's Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in California recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of its award-winning research initiative called "Beach Watch." Volunteer citizen scientists help marine researchers by observing the coast of this marine sanctuary that is located near San Francisco's famous Golden Gate. The volunteers, who have been trained by Greater Farallones Association, counting coastal birds and mammals and noting how human activity affects the wildlife. [NOAA NCEI News]
Rebuilding the canary rockfish fishery is described -- NOAA Fisheries and the Pacific Fishery Management Council developed a management program that allowed the canary rockfish fishery to be rebuilt since 2000 when it had been declared overfished. Canary rockfish which is one of at least 60 rockfish species in the West Coast groundfish fishery. [NOAA Fisheries Feature Story]
Europeans to launch new polar-orbiting satellite needed for predicting Earth's weather and climate -- The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is intending to launch a new polar-orbiting satellite identified as Metop-C on Tuesday, 6 November 2018 from French Guiana. Metop-C is a joint effort between EUMETSAT, the European Space Agency, NASA, and NOAA that is designed to collect valuable data about Earth's atmosphere, land, and oceans needed for the preparation of daily weather forecasts around the globe. Its predecessors in the EUMETSAT Polar System series include Metop-A launched in 2006 and Metop-B in 2012. Metop-C will be placed into an orbit that has an altitude of approximately 505 miles and will carry 14 instruments designed to make temperature humidity measurements, readings of wind speed and direction, and determine atmospheric ozone profiles. [NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service News]
Preparation of NOAA's Monthly Global Climate Report is highlighted -- A member of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information recently posted a blog on the ClimateWatch Magazine that describes how colleagues have been preparing NOAA's Monthly Global Climate Reports that are released by around the 18th day of the following month. These climatologists compile and analyze observed temperature and precipitation data that have been collected by land-based stations, ships and buoys from around the globe during the previous month, producing their report in timely fashion. In addition to producing tabulated data sets, they create a variety of global anomalies and percentiles maps showing the departure of the observed monthly temperatures from a long-term average or the temperatures ranked in terms of percentiles. Attention was also given to the early portion of the global records that extend back to 1880, while the continental record only goes back to 1910. [NOAA NCEI News]
Warming of the deep Southern Ocean documented by research cruises -- A feature posted in the ClimateWatch Magazine describes how data collected by repeat cruises around the global ocean over the last three decades have been used to document the long-term heat storage trends at ocean depths between 2,000 and 6,000 meters associated with human-caused global warming. "CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) profilers" were lowered from the research ships traversing the oceans on predetermined routes to collect temperature data at depths of at least 2000 meters. Analysis of the data at the University of Washington indicated that the largest rates of warming have occurred in the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, where the rate of heat gain was as much as 1 watt per square meter between the mid-1990s and 2010. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Earth's oceans absorb heat at a higher rate than previously thought -- Researchers at Princeton University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and their colleagues recently reported that the Earth's ocean have absorbed an amount of heat energy each year between 1991 and 2016 approximately 150 times the energy humans produce as electricity annually, or 60 percent more heat per year than previously stated in the 2014 Fifth Assessment Report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The researchers base their findings of the amount of ocean heat uptake by using hydrographic temperature measurements and data from the Argo float program, which expanded its coverage after 2007. [Princeton University News]
Investigating how marine life recovered after a major mass extinction event -- Researchers at the China University of Geosciences and the United Kingdom's University of Leeds recently reported on their investigations into how life recovered on Earth after the historic Permian-Triassic (PT) mass extinction using a new global fossil database. This mass extinction, which occurred approximately 252 million years ago, resulted in more than 95 percent of the marine species being killed in less than 100,000 years. Massive volcanism in present day Siberia appears to be the trigger of the PT extinction, especially in the oceans, as greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide) were emitted from the volcanoes; the increased levels of these greenhouse gases resulted in a warming of the oceans to the point where the amount of dissolved oxygen became insufficient to sustain life. However, the researchers found that some of the marine organisms at the top of the food chain appeared to have been faster at emerging in the oceans and starting the re-population of the marine ecosystem during the Triassic following the extinction event. Some of the animals at the top of the chain emerged in 5 million years as compared with 50 million years for the underlying ecosystem. [EOS Earth & Space 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]

Concept of the Week: Solving the Mystery of Seamount Ecosystems

The United States Commission on Ocean Policy reports that less than 5% of the ocean floor has been explored. This is beginning to change as scientists and engineers develop and apply new technologies to investigate deep ocean waters and the sea bottom (refer to Chapter 13 in your DataStreme Ocean textbook). Consider, for example, the effort to obtain a better understanding of seamount ecosystems.

A seamount is a submarine mountain of volcanic origin (now extinct) that rises more than 1000 m (3300 ft) above the ocean floor. Usually a seamount summit is 1000 to 2000 m (3300 to 6600 ft) below sea level. They occur as isolated peaks, chains (e.g., Emperor Seamounts in the North Pacific; New England chain in the North Atlantic), or clusters. The term "seamount" was first applied in 1936 to the Davidson Seamount located off the coast of Southern California. Scientists estimate that perhaps 30,000 dot the ocean floor with as many as two-thirds located on the Pacific Ocean bottom. However, fewer than one thousand seamounts have been named and only a handful of seamounts has received detailed scientific study.

In recent years, discovery of unique life forms on seamounts has spurred scientific interest in seamount ecosystems. Many nations, including the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, are supporting scientific cruises to observe and collect specimens from seamount ecosystems. Seamount ecosystems are unusually productive and are home to unique species. Some seamount surveys have found that certain seamount species are endemic, that is, they live on only one seamount or a few nearby peaks. For example, up to one-third of all species living on some seamounts off New Caledonia are endemic while up to half of the invertebrates and fish on the Nazca seamount off Chile are endemic. In the northeast Pacific, large-scale eddies may transport larval fish from coastal environments to isolated seamounts located out at sea. Furthermore, some scientists argue that seamounts may function as stepping stones that allow for migration of species over lengthy periods--perhaps over millions of years. In addition, some seamounts may serve as aids to navigation for fish that migrate over long distances. For example, hammerhead sharks may use the magnetic field surrounding seamounts to find their way.

The recent effort to survey and explore seamount ecosystems has reached new urgency with the realization of the devastating impact of commercial fish trawlers on those ecosystems. In some cases, trawling has stripped off most marine life (e.g., coral gardens) from the surface of seamounts leaving behind mostly bare rock. Typically, trawled seamounts have only half the biomass and considerably fewer species than undisturbed seamounts. Scientists anticipate that a better understanding of seamount ecosystems will help make the case for their conservation and inform the most effective strategies for their protection. Australia is one of the first nations to protect seamount ecosystems, establishing the Tasmanian Seamount Marine Reserve in 1999. The reserve covers 370 square km (140 square mi) and includes more than a dozen seamounts.

Historical Events:

5 November 1991...Typhoon Thelma was one of the most devastating tropical systems to affect the Philippines in the 20th Century. Reports indicated that 6000 people died by catastrophic events including dam failure, landslides, and extensive flash flooding. The highest casualties occurred on Leyte Island where widespread logging in recent years had stripped the hills above the port city bare of vegetation. (National Weather Service files)
6 November 1528...Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca became the first known European to set foot on Texas soil, near present-day Galveston Island. (Wikipedia)
7 November 1837...One of the most intense hurricanes ever to strike Hawaii brought winds of 115 mph to Hilo, killing 730 people. (National Weather Service files)
8 November 1870...The first storm warning was issued by Professor Increase A. Lapham of the U.S. Signal Corps Weather Service as a cautionary forecast for the Great Lakes. Lapham believed that warnings of deadly storms on the Great Lakes could be derived from telegraphed weather observations. A bill was introduced and signed into law to establish a national telegraphic weather service. The Signal Corps began taking observations one week early on 1 November 1870. (National Weather Service files)
8 November 1994...The twelfth and final tropical cyclone of the Atlantic hurricane season formed on this day in the southwestern Caribbean. While Hurricane Gordon was only a Category 1, it still killed 1,149 individuals, including 1,122 in Haiti. (National Weather Service files)
8 November 2013...Super Typhoon Haiyan struck the central Philippines with 16-foot waves, a foot of rain, and winds on land of 147 mph gusting to 170 mph (winds of 195 mph with gusts to 235 mph were estimated when the system had been over open water). Five to six thousand people were estimated to have perished. (National Weather Service files)
9 November 1913...The "Freshwater Fury," a rapidly deepening extratropical cyclone, caused unpredicted gales on the Great Lakes. Seventeen ships, including eight large ore carriers on Lake Erie sank drowning 270 sailors. Cleveland, OH reported 17.4 in. of snow in 24 hrs, and a storm total of 22.2 in., both all-time records for that location. During the storm, winds at Cleveland averaged 50 mph, with gusts to 79 mph. The storm produced sustained winds of 62 mph at Port Huron, MI, wind gusts to 80 mph at Buffalo, NY. (9^th-11^th) (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
9 November 1932...An unnamed hurricane struck Cuba, with winds reaching approximately 210 mph at Nuvitas. However, a storm surge was the main killer of 2500 of the 4000 residents of Santa Cruiz del Sur. Essentially no storm records exist, as the observer drowned, with records and instruments washed away. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
9-12 November 1970...One of the worst cyclones in recent history hit the coast of Bangladesh. Storm surges of 13 to 16 feet combined with high tides and more than 10 inches of rain caused incredible flooding and killed more than 300,000 people. (National Weather Service files)
10 November 1835...A severe storm crossed the Great Lakes and "swept the lakes clear of sail" as 19 ships were lost and 254 sailors killed on Lakes Erie, Ontario and Michigan. (Intellicast)
10 November 1975...Another "freshwater fury" hit the Great Lakes. A large ore carrier on Lake Superior, the Edmund Fitzgerald, sank near Crisp Point with the loss of its crew of 29 men. Eastern Upper Michigan and coastal Lower Michigan were hardest hit by the storm, which produced wind gusts to 71 mph at Sault Ste Marie, MI and gusts to 78 mph at Grand Rapids, MI. Severe land and road erosion occurred along the Lake Michigan shoreline. A popular song by Gordon Lightfoot was inspired by the storm. (David Ludlum) (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
Editor's note: In 2015, the NOAA National Weather Service Forecast Office at Marquette, MI created a web page commemorating the 40^th anniversary of the sinking and describing the advances in marine weather forecasting over the last four decades. EJH
10 November 1993...Violent storm over the Black Sea closed the Russian oil terminal port of Novorossisk for 20 days. "Bora" winds reported as high as 112 mph sank at least seven ships. (The Weather Doctor)
11 November 1099...Violent storm in the North Sea killed 100,000 people in England and The Netherlands. (The Weather Doctor)