20-24 June 2005

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2005 with new Ocean News and Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 29 August 2005. All the current online homepage products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

• New England red tide website placed on line -- NOAA officials recently unveiled a new NOAA New England Red Tide Information Center Web site that is intended to provide the public and media with information concerning the red tide off the New England coast. [NOAA News]
• New ocean buoys deployed for hurricane surveillance -- The National Data Buoy Center has announced that it has deployed seven new moored instrumented weather buoys across the western Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico to enhance the weather observations across the region in advance of the upcoming hurricane season. [NOAA News]
• Stronger hurricanes could accompany warmer planet -- A researcher with the National Center for Atmospheric Research cautioned that more intense hurricanes with greater rainfall could result from the forecasted increased global temperatures. [EurekAlert!]
• New satellite to monitor the planet's environment -- NOAA officials announced that a new geosynchronous satellite, currently identified as GOES-N, is scheduled for launch next Friday, 24 June 2005. This satellite will have sensors that are intended to be a part of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems that will monitor tropical weather systems (e.g., hurricanes), severe local storms and solar disturbances. [NOAA News]
• Over 5000 saved -- Last week NOAA officials reported that with five people rescued in waters off the Florida coast, more than 5000 lives have been saved in the United States since 1982 because of the international Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System (COSPAS-SARSAT). [NOAA News]
• Tropical Weather Update -- Tropical Storm Arlene, the first named tropical cyclone of the new 2005 North Atlantic Hurricane Season made landfall along the Gulf Coast one week ago.
• Tropical Storm Arlene washed out a road and caused some beach erosion along sections of the Florida Panhandle that had been hit last September by Hurricane Ivan. [USA Today] Elsewhere across the Sunshine State, the tourism industry appears not to have suffered from last year's four major hurricanes. [USA Today] Farther to the west, Tropical Storm Arlene was a minor inconvenience for residents of coastal Alabama who are still working to clean up after Hurricane Ivan. [USA Today]
• Heavy rains accompanying Tropical Storm Arlene caused some minor flooding in western North Carolina at the beginning of last week. [USA Today]
• Details about the Antarctic iceberg calving studied -- Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Tasmania and the Australian Antarctic Division have been studying the details of the processes involved with the detachment of icebergs from the Antarctic ice sheet. [Scripps Institution of Oceanography]
• Tracking the fresh water influx into the North Atlantic -- Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute have been assessing the amount of fresh water being added to the North Atlantic during the last several decades because of melting glaciers and increased precipitation. They have compared this increase of fresh water accumulation with the decrease in salinity and report a threshold could be reached in the next century that would result in changes in the ocean circulation and the poleward transport of heat. [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution]
• Shells reveal struggles in ancient oceans -- Scientists at Virginia Tech and the University of Michigan reported on their study of the drill holes in the fossil remains of brachiopods in the ancient oceans of the Paleozoic Era (550 million to 250 million years ago), noting that predators did cause some problems for the early brachiopods. [EurekAlert!]
• Lightning Safety Awareness Week-- The National Weather Service is observing Lightning Awareness Week during this upcoming week of 19-25 June 2005 . For more information, go to http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/, a site that includes a variety of informational and teacher resource materials. [NOAA News]
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes-- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

• 20 June 1597...Willem Barents, the Dutch explorer who tried to search for the Northeast Passage, died in the Arctic off the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya when his ship became trapped in ice. (Wikipedia)
• 20 June 1819...The 320-ton paddle-wheel SS Savannah arrived in Liverpool, England to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, having left the port of Savannah, GA on 22 May. (InfoPlease Daily Almanac)
• 20 June 1940...The first successful west to east navigation of the Northwest Passage began at Vancouver, BC. (Wikipedia)
• 21 June 1791...A hurricane, called El Temporal de Barreto - the storm of Barreto, generated a monster ocean wave that carried off the coffin of a rich, but hated, count as he lay in state in his mansion near Havana, Cuba. (The Weather Doctor)
• 21 June 1886...A destructive hurricane hit the Apalachicola-Tallahassee area of Florida on the summer solstice. Extensive damage was done in Florida and throughout the southeast by this storm, which was the first hurricane of the year. Damage was due mainly to extremely high tides. (Intellicast)
• 21 June 1961...The first practical plant for the conversion of seawater to drinking water at Freeport, TX was dedicated when President John Kennedy pressed a switch installed in his Washington, DC office. The plant was capable of producing about a million gallons of water a day, supplying fresh water to Freeport at a cost of about $1.25 per thousand gallons. The large-scale evaporation method used then has now been replaced by reverse osmosis as special polymers are now used as filtering membranes. (Today in Science History)
• 22 June 1675...The Royal Greenwich Observatory was created by Royal Warrant in England by Charles II, with its practical astronomy serving as its primary mission, including navigation, timekeeping and the determination of star positions. In 1767 the observatory began publishing The Nautical Almanac, which established the longitude of Greenwich as a baseline for time calculations. The almanac's popularity among navigators led in part to the adoption (1884) of the Greenwich meridian as the Earth's prime meridian (0° longitude) and the international time zones. (Today in Science History)
• 22 June 1948...Congress enacted Public Law 738, which authorized the operation of floating ocean stations for the purpose of providing search and rescue communication and air-navigation facilities, and meteorological services in such ocean areas as are regularly traversed by aircraft of the United States. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 23 June 1501...The Portuguese navigator, Pedro Alvares Cabral, returned to Portugal after a voyage during which he claimed Brazil for Portugal and then journeyed to India in search of pepper and spices. (Wikipedia)
• 23 June 1611...English navigator Henry Hudson was set adrift along with his son and seven loyal crew members in an open boat in Hudson Bay by mutineers on his ship Discovery; they were never seen again. He was on his fourth voyage and he had become famous for attempting to find a route from Europe to Asia via the Arctic Ocean. (Wikipedia)
• 23 June 1716...The Province of Massachusetts authorized erection of first lighthouse in America on Great Brewster Island, Boston Harbor. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 23 June 1938...The first "oceanarium" opened at Marineland in St. Augustine, FL. (Today in Science History)
• 24 June 1497...The Italian navigator and explorer Giovanni (John) Cabot, sailing in the service of England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland, claiming the continent for England. (Wikipedia)
• 25 June 1989...Tropical Depression Allison, the remnants of what was earlier Cosme (a hurricane over the Pacific Ocean that dissipated as it crossed northern Mexico), began to spread heavy rain into southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. (The National Weather Summary)
• 26 June 1954...Eight fishermen were swept off the breakwater of the Montrose Harbor in Chicago, IL by a seiche on Lake Michigan. At the time, this killer wave rose suddenly from a serene Lake Michigan; sunny skies and calm wind conditions were reported. The seiche, produced by an earlier squall on the lake, caused the lake water to rise ten feet. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 26 June 1959...Following an opening ceremony attended by President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II, 28 naval vessels sailed from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes, marking the formal opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway to seagoing ships. The Seaway consists of a navigational channel system of canals, locks, and dredged waterways, permitting travel from the Gulf of St. Lawrence nearly 2500 miles inland to Duluth, MN on Lake Superior. (Naval Historical Center) (The History Channel)
• 26 June 1986...Hurricane Bonnie made landfall on the upper Texas coast. A wind gust to 98 mph occurred at Sea Rim State Park. The town of Ace recorded 13 inches of rain. (Intellicast)
• 26 June-7 July 1989...Tropical Storm Allison formed in the Gulf of Mexico from remnants of Hurricane Cosme in the eastern North Pacific. Periods of heavy rain caused flooding across parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. Winnfield, LA reported a six-day total of 29.52 inches of rain. This system was responsible for eleven deaths and approximately 500 million dollars in damage. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)

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URL: DS-Ocean/news.html

Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2005, The American Meteorological Society.