WEEK NINE: 28 March-1 April 2016

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Catching the last rays of the Sun at the South Pole -- At the time of the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere early last Sunday morning, the Southern Hemisphere was entering astronomical autumn season. For those people stationed at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the Sun was preparing to go below the horizon for the next six months. Although the Sun is now below the horizon, images of the station are still available from the South Pole Live Camera due to extended twilight at the Pole. [NOAA News]
• Tsunami Awareness Week -- NOAA and the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program (a partnership between NOAA, the United States Geological Survey, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the 28 U.S. Coastal States, Territories, and Commonwealths) have designated this upcoming week (27 March - 2 April 2016) as National Tsunami Awareness Week. The entire week is Tsunami Preparedness Week in Alaska. [Governor's Office for State of Alaska], as well as in Guam, Maine and New Hampshire. The month of April is Tsunami Awareness Month in Hawaii. The state government in Alaska has also established the 27th of each March to be 1964 Alaska Earthquake Remembrance Day in observance of the anniversary of the series of devastating tsunamis that struck southeastern Alaska following several major earthquakes. Additional information is also available for the recent 50th anniversary of the Great Alaskan earthquake and tsunami of 1964. [NOAA Weather-Ready Nation]
• Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2016 Campaign resumes -- The fourth in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2016 will commence on Wednesday (30 March) and continue through 8 April. 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 (Leo in the Northern Hemisphere and Crux in the Southern Hemisphere) with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. The next series in the 2016 campaign is scheduled for 29 April-8 May 2016. [GLOBE at Night]
• Celebrating women who were STEM pioneers at Goddard Space Flight Center -- In conjunction with March being designated as Women's History Month, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recently honored three notable female scientists and engineers who worked at the Center during the mid-20th century. One of these women was Dr. Joanne Simpson, a meteorologist who spent nearly 30 years on cloud system research and developed her "hot towers" hypothesis that involved columns of warm and humid air rising off the ocean surface to form soaring clouds that would eventually form tropical storm systems. She was also involved with the development of NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a satellite that measured rainfall across the tropics and subtropics. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Feature]
• Asteroids, climate change and mass extinctions -- You are invited to read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth that describes how geoscientists have gathered evidence of five major mass extinctions over the last 550 million years from fossil records. These records also help in reconstructing past climates and help in the understanding of climate change.

Ocean in the News:

• Eye on the tropics --- During the last week tropical cyclone activity was limited to South Indian Ocean basin. Cyclone Emeraude, which had become a major category 4 cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale during the previous week, continued to make a large loop over the waters of the Indian Ocean to the east-southeast of Diego Garcia. During the first several days of last week, Emeraude weakened to a tropical storm and lost its tropical characteristics as it traveled toward the southwest. The NASA Hurricane Page has satellite images and additional information for Cyclone Emeraude.
• Mystery of missing US Navy tug solved after 95 years -- Last week officials from NOAA and the U.S. Navy announced that the Navy tug USS Conestoga, which disappeared with 56 crew members on board in 1921, was discovered in the waters of Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary offshore of San Francisco's Golden Gate. Previous to its discovery, the USS Conestoga was the last U.S. Navy ship to be lost in peacetime without a trace.[NOAA National Marine Sanctuary News] A video explaining the history of the tug is also available. [NOAA News]
• Historic cooperation on marine science and navigation issues between US and Cuba begins -- Even prior to President Obama's visit to Cuba this past week, bilateral cooperation between the US and Cuba had begun to take place between the two countries:
  • An agreement reached between NOAA, the US National Park Service and Cuba's National Center for Protected Areas to share research designed to foster cooperation on scientific research into some of the Caribbean's most ecologically significant resources, especially on corals and fisheries. The first focus of this agreement is upon five sensitive environmental areas in the Gulf of Mexico--Cuba's Guanahacabibes National Park, including its offshore coral reefs at Banco de San Antonio; NOAA's Flower Garden Banks and Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuaries; and the Park Service's Dry Tortugas and Biscayne National Parks. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
  • A Memorandum of Understanding was recently signed by the Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Havana, and the Chief of Cuba’s National Office of Hydrography and Geodesy that is designed to improve maritime navigation safety and related areas of mutual interest to protect lives and property at sea.  The two countries agreed to work together on a new international paper chart that will cover south Florida, the Bahamas and northern Cuba. . [NOAA News]
• Importance of maritime forests described -- Scott Crocker, site manager for the Currituck Banks National Estuarine Research Reserve in North Carolina, identifies a maritime forest and describes how this type of forest is important for barrier islands and coastal resilience. [NOAA Ocean Today]
• Understanding the threat humans pose to coral reefs -- An 18-minute "Making Waves" podcast was produced by the NOAA National Ocean Service that describes the NOAA National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP). The focus of this program is the understanding as to how humans pose a threat to coral reefs, which are under pressure from climate change, pollution and unsustainable use. Two of NOAA's social scientists were interviewed. [NOAA National Ocean Service Podcast]
• NASA’s CORAL campaign discussed -- Eric Hochberg, a reef scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, was recently interviewed about NASA’s recently launched COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) mission, a three-year field expedition that was just launched in the last two weeks. This mission will use advanced instruments on airplanes and in the water to survey the world's coral reefs in detail. [NASA Global Climate Change News]
• Scientist with Oceans Melting Greenland mission fields questions -- NASA Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) Principal Investigator, Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was recently interviewed about the new NASA airborne mission Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) that is designed to observe changing water temperatures and glaciers reaching the ocean around Greenland between 2015 and 2020 to improve estimates of sea level rise. [NASA Global Climate Change News]
  Blogs are being posted by the scientists involved with the OMG mission. As of the end of last week, the OMG team had flown approximately halfway around Greenland as it collected data along the coast. [NASA Earth Expedition Blogs]
• Slow growth of Pacific halibut connected to fishing -- During the last 30 years, the weight of Pacific halibut caught in the western and central Gulf of Alaska has decreased from an average of 120 pounds in the mid-1980s to under 45 pounds currently. Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, NOAA and the Halibut Commission had pointed to competition for food and a changing environment as reasons for the smaller fish, but now are also investigating impacts of fishing. [Alaska Fish Radio]
• "Water Resources Dashboard" tool is unveiled as a 'one-stop shop' for water data -- On World Water Day 2016 early last week, NOAA officials launched the "Water Resources Dashboard/" a one-stop website that provides the public, water managers and governmental officials with relevant water data for assessing drought, flooding, precipitation, climate and other measures. The Water Resources Dashboard is located on the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit (toolkit.climate.gov). [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
• Role of oceans in various climate phenomena advanced by GO-SHIP -- An international team of scientists reports that the Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) has led to major scientific discoveries about the role of oceans in climate change, carbon cycling, and biogeochemical responses to climate change. GO-SHIP is a ship-based hydrographic decadal data collection program built as a component of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). [NOAA Climate Program Office 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: Controlling Nutrient Input into Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Bay is the nation's largest estuary; it is more than 300 km (185 mi) long, 65 km (40 mi) at its broadest, and averages about 20 m (66 ft) deep. The estuary was formed by the post-glacial rise in sea level that flooded the valley of the ancient Susquehanna River. The Bay receives about half its water from the Atlantic Ocean and the other half from the more than 150 rivers and streams draining a 166,000 square kilometer land area encompassing parts of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Major rivers that empty into Chesapeake Bay include the Potomac, Susquehanna, York, and James.

As described in more detail in your DataStreme Ocean textbook, an estuary is a complex and highly productive ecosystem where seawater and freshwater runoff meet and mix to some degree. In Chesapeake Bay, more-dense seawater creeps northward along the bottom of the estuary, moving under the less-dense fresh water flowing in the opposite direction. This circulation combined with wind-driven and tidal water motions causes salinity to decrease upstream in the Bay, from values typical of the open ocean at its mouth to freshwater values at its northern margin.

As in all ecosystems, organisms living in estuaries depend on one another and their physical environment for food energy and habitat. Phytoplankton and submerged aquatic vegetation (e.g., marsh grass) are the primary producers (autotrophs) in estuarine food chains. Chesapeake Bay consumers (heterotrophs) include zooplankton, finfish, shellfish, birds, and humans.

Human activity has greatly modified Chesapeake Bay with consequences for the functioning of the ecosystem. Much of the original forests that covered its drainage basin were cleared and converted to farmland, roads, cities, and suburban developments. These modifications accelerated the influx of nutrients (i.e., compounds of phosphorus and nitrogen), sediment, pesticides, and other pollutants into the Bay. More nutrients spur growth of algal populations and when these organisms die (in mid-summer), their remains sink to the bottom. Decomposition of their remains reduces dissolved oxygen levels in the Chesapeake's bottom water. More sediment increases the turbidity of the water, reducing sunlight penetration for photosynthesis. Presently Chesapeake Bay is on the Federal list of "impaired waters" and in need of pollution abatement and remediation. States in the drainage basin have agreed to work together to clean up the Bay but there are significant obstacles including cost.

One casualty of human modification of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem was marsh grass-reduced by 90% from historical levels. Marsh grass anchors sediment and dampens wave action thereby controlling shoreline erosion and turbidity. Marsh grass is a food source for many organisms including waterfowl and small mammals and serves as a primary nursery for crabs and many species of fish. Reduction of this habitat along with over-fishing has been implicated in the decline of populations of blue crabs, a mainstay of the Bay fishery for more than a century. Over the past decade, the number of adult female blue crabs plunged by 80%. Without adequate protection by marsh grass, blue crabs are more vulnerable to predation by striped bass (i.e., rockfish). Striped bass turned to blue crabs as a food source when fishing reduced the numbers of menhaden, their preferred food. Menhaden is a marine fish in the herring family and the Bay's top fishery by weight.

Human modification of the Chesapeake Bay drainage basin converted it from an essentially closed system to an open system. In the original climax forests, nutrients primarily cycled within the system with relatively little input to the Bay. Modification of the land for agriculture increased the area of the soil exposed to the elements and runoff from rain and snowmelt accelerated nutrient input into the Bay. In addition to such non-point (area) sources of nutrients are point sources including the effluent of wastewater treatment plants that discharge treated water into rivers and streams that drain into the Bay.

For decades, agriculture has successfully employed various cultivation practices that limit the runoff from cropland (e.g., contour plowing, strip cropping, and retention ponds.) However, less than one-third of the 300-wastewater treatment facilities located in the Chesapeake Bay drainage basin have the technology to remove high levels of nutrients from their effluent. Under current environmental regulations, states are not required to regulate the nutrient content of this discharge. But in late October 2003, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a private, not-for-profit environmental advocacy organization called on Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia to specify nutrient limits on permits they grant to all wastewater treatment facilities. In support of their recommendations, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation cited the many water quality problems stemming from excessive nutrient load in the Bay waters (e.g., algal blooms, spread of "dead zones.") According to the U. S. EPA, under the federal Clean Water Act, a state can control nitrogen pollution if it determines that environmental harm is taking place. However, the EPA estimates that as much as $4.4 billion would be required to install state-of-the-art nutrient removal technologies at all major plants (those treating more than 500,000 gallons of wastewater per day).

Concept of the Week: Questions

1. In terms of nutrient cycling, the climax forest that originally occupied the Chesapeake Bay drainage basin was a(n) [(open)(closed)] system.
2. Excessive input of nutrients into Chesapeake Bay [(spurs the growth of)(has little impact on)] algal populations and [(increases)(reduces)] the concentration of dissolved oxygen in bottom waters.

Historical Events:

• 28 March 1848...USS Supply reached the Bay of Acre, anchoring under Mount Carmel near the village of Haifa, during expedition to explore the Dead Sea and the River Jordan. (Naval Historical Center)
• 28 March 1910...Henri Fabre became the first person to fly a seaplane after taking off from a water runway at Martigues near Marseilles, France. (Wikipedia)
• 28 March 2004...The only known South Atlantic hurricane was recorded as Tropical Cyclone Catarina's winds hit 100mph. (National Weather Service files)
  
• 29-31 March 1848...An ice dam at the neck of Lake Erie and the entrance to the Niagara River between Fort Erie, ON and Buffalo, NY caused by wind, waves and lake currents stopped flow of water over Niagara Falls for 30 hours, commencing during the late hours of the 29^th. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (The Weather Doctor)
• 29 March 1910...The world's largest oceanographic museum was opened in Monaco through the generosity of Prince Albert I of Monaco, a great oceanographer, statesman, and humanitarian. This museum, a part of the Oceanographic Institute, has a grandiose facade overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. (Today in Science History)
• 29 March 1914...The Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Ireland, which had departed Quebec the previous day for Liverpool, collided with the Norwegian collier Storstad in the fog along the St. Lawrence River, sinking with the loss of 1024 passengers and crew.
• 29 March 1985...The Nantucket I was decommissioned, ending 164 years of lightship service. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 30 March 1923...The Cunard liner Laconia arrived in New York City, becoming the first passenger ship to circumnavigate the world, a cruise of 130 days. (Today in Science History)
• 31 March 1932...The United States signed the Whaling Convention at Geneva with 21 other countries. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 31 March 1995...Coast Guard Communication Area Master Station Atlantic sent a final message by Morse code and then signed off, officially ending more than 100 years of telegraph communications. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 31 March 2000...The water temperature of Lake Erie at Buffalo, NY was 39 degrees Fahrenheit on the last day of March, tying the maximum temperature for the date with that of 1998. Ice was present in 61 of 74 years on the 31^st, but this was third year in a row with open water. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 1 April 1873...The British White Star steamship Atlantic sank off Nova Scotia killing 547 after striking an underwater rock near Meagher's Island while on a voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City. Only 413 people survived. (Wikipedia)
• 1 April 1946...The Scotch Cap Lighthouse on Unimak Island in Alaska's Aleutian Islands was shaken by two earthquakes in a 27 minute span, then obliterated by a tsunami wave. The entire five-man crew was killed and the lighthouse antenna (105 ft above sea level) was washed away. Some debris was found 115 ft above sea level. The tsunami that propagated across the Pacific Ocean was responsible for more than 165 fatalities and over $26 million in damage. Many of the casualties were on the Hawaiian Islands, especially in Hilo on the Big Island. This tsunami was responsible for the development of the current Pacific Tsunami Warning System. (University of Washington) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (US Coast Guard Historian's Office)
• 2 April 1513...Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon came ashore on the Florida coast near present-day St. Augustine and claimed the territory for the Spanish crown. He is reported to be the first known European to set foot in Florida. (The History Channel)
• 2 April 1958...One of the most destructive coastal storms in years battered New England (31 March-3 April). Some beaches between Portland, ME and Cape Cod, MA were eroded by approximately 50 ft. Miles of sea walls and bulkheads were either breached or demolished. Many beachfront cottages in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine were sandblasted. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 2 April 1926...Baden-Baden, a rotor ship invented by Anton Flettner left Hamburg, Germany on a transatlantic crossing, arriving in New York on 29 May 1926. The ship used two 9-ft diameter, 50-ft high cylinders, mounted vertically on the deck at the bow and the stern for propulsion, utilizing the aerodynamic power of the Magnus Effect, which builds air pressure behind a rotating cylinder. (Today in Science History)
• 3 April 1797...Captain Thomas Truxtun, USN, devised and issued the first known American signal book using numerary system, encompassing 10 numeral pennants, made of combinations of red, white, blue, and yellow bunting, with flags for repeaters. This signal book contained approximately 300 signals. Fog signals were made by gunfire. Night signals were made by lanterns and gunfire. (Naval Historical Center)

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Prepared by DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D.,
email hopkins@aos.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2016, The American Meteorological Society.