Weekly Ocean News

Weekly Ocean News

DATASTREME OCEAN WEEK TWELVE: 15-19 April 2013

Item of Interest:

Polar-orbiting environmental satellite retired after long run -- NOAA officials announced last week that all the instruments onboard the agency's NOAA-17 Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite (POES) had been turned off and the spacecraft decommissioned after nearly 11 years of collecting environmental data from the planet that were used in a variety of weather and climate models. NOAA-17 was one of the longest operating spacecraft operated by NOAA, surpassing the typical lifespan of only three years. Other POES spacecraft currently operated by NOAA include NOAA-15, NOAA-16, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 and Suomi NPP. In addition, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) also operate polar-orbiting spacecraft. [NOAA News]
NOAA receives prestigious Space Achievement Award -- Early last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) received the prestigious 2013 Space Achievement Award today from the non-profit Space Foundation "for its use of space-based systems in making life-saving predictions and issuing early warnings of calamitous weather conditions." NOAA monitors the planetary environment from geosynchronous orbits with its GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites) spacecraft and from sun-synchronous polar orbits with its POES (Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites) spacecraft. The award was made at the Space Foundation's 29th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. [NOAA News]
NOAA Administrator makes statement on agency's budget request for 2014 -- Last week, Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Acting NOAA Administrator, issued a statement pertaining to her agency's Fiscal Year 2014 budget request that amounts to approximately $5.4 billion. She outlined the mission of NOAA of science, service and environmental stewardship and the role that it plays in the nation's economy and wellbeing. [NOAA News]
Accessing and interpreting climate data -- If you would like to obtain a variety of climate data for your home town or state that are available from the National Weather Service, please read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth. This Supplemental not only identifies some of the sites to find the data, but also provides you with a brief explanation of the terminology used to identify the climate data.

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- The weather across the tropical ocean basins was relatively tranquil last week, as only two organized tropical cyclones developed across the tropical waters of the South Indian Ocean. A tropical storm that had developed at the end of the previous week to the south-southeast of Diego Garcia intensified into Tropical Cyclone Imelda by midweek after traveling westward across the central sections of the tropical South Indian Ocean. Turning southward, Imelda intensified to a category 2 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. By this past weekend, Imelda had weakened back to a tropical storm as it continued to travel toward the south, passing well to the east of La Reunion. Subsequently, this tropical storm should move toward the south-southeast at the beginning of this week. Satellite images and additional information on Tropical Cyclone Imelda can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
Early last week, a tropical storm formed to the east-southeast of Australia's Cocos Islands over the South Indian Ocean approximately halfway between Australia and Sri Lanka. Traveling toward to the south, this tropical storm quickly intensified into Tropical Cyclone Victoria, which remained a category 1 tropical cyclone for less than 12 hours. Eventually, Victoria became a remnant low and disintegrated by the end of the week as it passed well to the west of Learmonth, Australia. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite imagery pertaining to Tropical Cyclone Victoria.
The 2012 hurricane season reviewed -- The 2012 hurricane seasons in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific are reviewed and compared to the more than 150 years of record keeping in the North Atlantic and the 40 years in the eastern North Pacific. [AMS DataStreme Atmosphere]
Hurricane season forecast -- Last week, the hurricane forecast team from Colorado State University headed by Phil Klotzbach released its April forecast of the 2013 North Atlantic hurricane season that officially begins on 1 June 2013. The team, which includes Professor William Gray, foresees a hurricane season that should be more active than the long-term (1981-2010) climatology for tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic. They feel that several factors would cause an active season, due in part to to an anomalous warming of the tropical Atlantic in the last several months. In addition, El Niño conditions do not appear to be developing during the upcoming summer and autumn seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. In their April forecast, the forecasters call for 18 named tropical cyclones (hurricanes and tropical storms), with nine potentially becoming hurricanes. As many as four of these hurricanes could become severe, reaching category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. They also anticipate an above average probability of a major Atlantic hurricane making landfall somewhere along the coast of the coterminous US and in the Caribbean. [The Tropical Meteorology Project]
"Sandy" has been retired from Atlantic Basin storm name list -- The World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) hurricane committee recently retired the name "Sandy" from its official list of names used to identify Atlantic Basin tropical storms and hurricanes because of the extreme impacts that Sandy caused across the Caribbean from Jamaica to Cuba and along the Middle Atlantic coast of the United States in October 2012. The replacement name on the list is "Sara" that could be used for the first time in 2018. [NOAA News]
Coastal Louisiana has been losing land for more than 80 years -- Surveys made from NASA satellite imagery and from US Geological Survey maps reveal that between 25 and 35 square miles of land along Louisiana's Gulf Coast disappears into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico since 1932. This loss of land has been attributed to a combination of subsidence (soil settling) and global sea level rise. [NOAA ClimateWatch Magazine]
Arctic could become nearly free of summer sea ice by 2050 -- Scientists from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and NOAA's Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington foresee that the Arctic Ocean would experience "nearly" ice-free summers before 2050, possibly within a decade or two. They base their outlook upon three methods involving statistical projections and dynamical global climate models that all indicated nearly ice-free summers by mid-century. They also indicate that "nearly" ice-free summers do not preclude the existence of some sea ice remaining north of the Canadian Archipelago and Greenland. [NOAA News]
New multi-satellite mission will take global rain measurements -- An upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) spacecraft mission sponsored by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will be aimed to fill in gaps in the global coverage of precipitation measurements. Eight precipitation measurement satellites from the US, Japan, France and India will comprise the GPM constellation. The centerpiece of the mission will be the GPM Core Observatory, a satellite to be launched in early 2014 that will unify all the measurements from the constellation and serve as a reference standard. The GPM Microwave Imager will estimate precipitation intensities, while the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar will make detailed measurements of three-dimensional rainfall structure and intensity. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
A short video entitled "For Good Measure" was prepared at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center that explains why scientists depend upon satellites to get a worldwide view of precipitation. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
New sea-level rise model forecasts major climate impact on some Pacific islands -- A new report prepared by US Geological Survey scientists warn that dynamic modeling of future climate-induced global sea-level rises appear to be more bleak for some low-lying Pacific Islands than previous forecasts made by passive computer modeling. The researchers used dynamic modeling that incorporated storm wind and wave action for two of the northwestern Hawaiian Islands in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. These were compared with the passive map-based "bathtub" inundation models. [USGS Newsroom]
Call made for marine observation network -- An assessment was recently published by a group of experts that called for the establishment of a comprehensive marine biodiversity observation network with modest funding within five years. This network would help fill major gaps in scientists' understanding of the global distribution of marine organisms, which are under unprecedented threat from climate change, pollution, overfishing, and habitat destruction. [American Institute of Biological Sciences Publications]
Ocean nutrients are a key component in future change -- An international team of scientists including those at the United Kingdom's National Oceanography Centre, Southampton claims that variations in nutrient availability in the world's oceans could be a vital component of future environmental change involving future climate and other human-caused factors. The report also highlights how nutrient cycles influence climate by increasing biological production, hence keeping carbon dioxide sequestered in the ocean. [National Oceanography Centre, Southampton ]
Early warning signs could reveal population collapse -- Physicists at the Massachusetts Institute Technology have demonstrated a way to predict the risk of the collapse of a population of living organisms due to factors such as climate change, overfishing or loss of food supply that is based upon variations in population density in neighboring regions. [MIT News]
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.

Concept of the Week: Climate Feedback Processes

Earth's climate system includes many interacting variables. Some variables are external to the Earth-atmosphere system and some are internal. External variables include solar energy output and Earth-sun geometry (i.e., the Milankovitch cycles). Internal variables include properties of the Earth's surface (e.g., albedo, moisture), the concentration of key atmospheric components (e.g., greenhouse gases, sulfurous aerosols), and cloud cover and thickness.

An important consideration in understanding how Earth's climate system responds to some perturbation is feedback. Feedback is defined as a sequence of interactions among variables in a system that determines how the system responds to some initial perturbation in one or more of the variables. Variables in Earth's climate system may interact in such a way as to either amplify (positive feedback) or lessen (negative feedback) a change in climate. An example of positive feedback is the ice-albedo effect described in Chapter 12 of the DataStreme Ocean textbook. Less ice cover in the Arctic greatly reduces the albedo of the Arctic Ocean causing higher sea surface temperatures and accelerated melting of the multiyear pack ice.

Consider an example of negative feedback. Increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide enhances the greenhouse effect causing global warming. Global warming in turn raises sea surface temperatures and increases the rate of evaporation. A more humid atmosphere means more persistent and thicker cloud cover but clouds have both a cooling and warming effect on the lower atmosphere. The relatively high albedo of cloud tops causes cooling whereas absorption and emission of infrared radiation by clouds causes warming by contributing to the greenhouse effect. Satellite measurements and numerical models indicate that cooling would dominate.

In general, negative feedback tends to dominate over positive feedback in Earth's climate system, limiting the magnitude of climate change. The great thermal inertia of the ocean is the principal reason for dampening the planetary temperature response.

Concept of the Week: Questions

Feedback in Earth's climate system that amplifies climate change is described as [(positive)(negative)] feedback.
In general, [(negative)(positive)] feedback tends to prevail in Earth's climate system.

Historical Events:

16 April 1851...The famous "Lighthouse Storm" (a "nor'easter") raged near Boston Harbor. Whole gales and gigantic waves destroyed the 116-ft Minot Ledge Light at Cohasset, MA with the loss of its two keepers still inside. The lighthouse was the first one built in the United States that was exposed to the full force of the ocean. The storm coupled with a spring tide resulted in massive flooding, great shipping losses and coastal erosion. Streets in Boston were flooded to the Custom House. (David Ludlum) (US Coast Guard Historians Office) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
16 April 1854...A furious storm that produced two feet of snow at New Brunswick, NJ also caused approximately 18 shipwrecks along the New Jersey coast. The immigrant ship Powhattan beached 100 yards from the shore. With rescue impossible, 340 people onboard lost their lives. "The shrieks of the drowning creatures were melancholy indeed." (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
16 April 1992...The Katina P ran aground off Maputo, Mozambique, causing 60,000 tons of crude oil to spill into the ocean. (Wikipedia)
17 April 1492...Spain and the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus signed a contract for him to sail to Asia to obtain spices. (Wikipedia)
17 April 1524...Giovanni Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, onboard the frigate La Dauphine "discovered" New York Bay. (Wikipedia)
18 April 1906...An early morning magnitude 7.8 earthquake along with a subsequent fire devastated much of San Francisco, CA, resulting in one of the worst natural disasters to hit a major US city. As many as 6000 people may have died because of this disaster. The earthquake was along the San Andreas Fault, with an epicenter thought to have been near Mussel Rock along the coast at suburban Daly City.
18 April 1848...U.S. Navy expedition to explore the Dead Sea and the River Jordan, commanded by LT William F. Lynch, reached the Dead Sea. (Naval Historical Center)
19 April 1770...Captain James Cook discovered New South Wales, Australia. Cook originally named the land Point Hicks.
20 April 1534...Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, set sail from St. Malo, France with two ships to explore the North American coastline in an attempt to find a passage to China. In this first voyage, he explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
20 April 1952...The tankers Esso Suez and Esso Greensboro collided in thick fog off the coast of Morgan City, LA. Only five of the Greensboro's crew survived after the ship burst into flame. (David Ludlum)
21 April 1910...The U.S. Government took over sealing operation of Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea from private lessees. (USCG Historian's Office)
21 April 1906...Commander Robert Peary, USN, discovered that the supposed Arctic Continent did not exist. (Naval Historical Center)