4-8 July 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.

• A new whale sighted -- Biologists with the NOAA Fisheries Service recently confirmed that another North Atlantic right whale mother-calf pair was sighted off the South Carolina coast, meaning that the current season would be one of the best for calving of this endangered species. [NOAA News]
• Online guide to Great Lakes harmful algae blooms unveiled -- The NOAA Center of Excellence for Great Lakes and Human Health recently created a Web site intended to provide the public with information concerning the types, locations and habits of harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes. [NOAA News]
• Great Lakes Ice Atlas is online -- The NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory has published its electronic atlas of Great Lake ice cover that is an assembly of charts of dates of first reported ice, dates of last reported ice and ice duration along with a variety of other relevant information based upon thirty years of data collected from satellites, aircraft and shipboard observers. [NOAA News]
• An interview with a "hurricane hunter" -- A young meteorologist and US Air Force officer recently described her experiences with a unit that flies into hurricanes. [USA Today]
• Tropical storm made landfall in Mexico -- Tropical Storm Bret, the second named tropical cyclone (to include tropical storms and hurricanes) of the 2005 North Atlantic hurricane season, developed over the southern Gulf of Mexico and made landfall along the northern Mexico coast by midweek. [USA Today]
• Rip current course readied for forecasters -- A new Web-based course intended to help National Weather Service forecasters identify rip currents and better warn the public of their dangers has been developed by the Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training (COMET) at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. [UCAR]
• Ocean acidification foreseen -- The United Kingdom's Royal Society has issued a report that warms that increased levels of carbon dioxide produced by human activity could increase acidity levels in the world's oceans to a level by 2100 that would threaten marine life. [EurekAlert!]
• Homeowners cautioned about a vigorous hurricane season -- Representatives from a well-known national window and door manufacturer are reminding residents in regions affected by tropical storms and hurricanes of the need for preparing the windows and doors in their homes before the beginning of what some have forecasted to be another intense hurricane season. [EurekAlert!]
• Increased Antarctic sea ice cover could be due to warmer air -- Using satellite data collected from NASA's Special Sensor Microwave/Imager, a scientist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County has found that the increased sea ice volume in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica appears to be associated with in the increases in precipitation caused by higher air temperatures associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions. [EurekAlert!]
• Hurricane-proofing homes improves in Florida-- Engineers at the University of Florida report that new homes built under the state's hurricane building code survived last year's four hurricanes that struck the Sunshine State in better fashion than those built prior to the state's hurricane building code that was instituted in 2002. [EurekAlert!]
• Historic schooner to help monitor New York Harbor -- The schooner, The Pioneer, built in 1885, will be used as part of the Urban Ocean Observatory at Stevens Institute of Technology to measure water conditions in New York Harbor, a major estuary on the East Coast. [EurekAlert!]
• Danger from shark attacks put in perspective -- A wildlife and fishery sciences professor at Texas A&M University notes that the number of deaths due to shark attacks has decreased in recent years, and one's chances of being bitten by a shark are lower than the chances of being killed in an automobile accident or dying from an allergic reaction to peanuts. [EurekAlert!]
• Connection between aerosols, coastal drizzle and cloud cover studied -- Scientists conducting a six-month research campaign at Point Reyes National Seashore, near San Francisco, CA as part of the US Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program are attempting to understand how natural and anthropogenic aerosols appear to reduce coastal drizzle while increasing cloud cover along the central California coast. [EurekAlert!]
• 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.

• 4 July 1687...An early experience of a tropical revolving storm was made by Captain William Dampier, whose ship survived what he called a "tuffoon" off the coast of China. In New Voyage Round the World, (published in 1697) Dampier wrote that this violent whirlwind storm had a calm central eye, and its winds moved from opposite directions as the storm moved passed. This was one of the earliest known European descriptions of a typhoon, which also presented a new understanding that storms somehow move, rather than remain stationary. During his ocean travels, he kept a detailed journal, noting native cultures, and made careful descriptions of natural history which in effect made him an early contributor to scientific exploration. (Today in Science History)
• 4 July 1840...The Cunard Line's 700-ton wooden paddlewheel steamer, RMS Britannia, departed from Liverpool, England bound for Halifax, NS on its first transatlantic passenger cruise. (Wikipedia)
• 4 July 1903...President Theodore Roosevelt sent the first official message over the new cable across the Pacific Ocean between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila. (Today in Science History)
• 5 July 1805...Robert, FitzRoy British naval officer, hydrographer, and meteorologist who commanded the voyage of HMS Beagle, aboard which Charles Darwin sailed around the world as the ship's naturalist. That voyage provided Darwin with much of the material on which he based his theory of evolution. FitzRoy retired from active duty in 1850 and from 1854 devoted himself to meteorology. He devised a storm warning system that was the prototype of the daily weather forecast, invented a barometer, and published The Weather Book (1863). His death on 30 April 1865 was by suicide, during a bout of depression. (Today in Science History)
• 5 July 1916...An early season hurricane produced 82 mph winds, an 11.6 foot tide, and a barometric pressure of 28.92 inches at Mobile, AL. (David Ludlum)
• 5 July 1989...Moisture from what once was Tropical Storm Allison triggered thunderstorms over the Middle Atlantic Coast Region, which deluged Wilmington, DE with a record 6.83 inches of rain in 24 hours, including 6.37 inches in just six hours. Up to ten inches of rain was reported at Claymont, northeast of Wilmington. July 1989 was thus the wettest month in seventy years for Wilmington, with a total of 12.63 inches of rain. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (Intellicast)
• 6 July 1484...Portuguese sea captain Diogo Cão located the mouth of the Congo River. (Wikipedia)
• 6 July 1988...The world's worst offshore accident occurred when 167 oil workers were killed by explosions and fires that destroyed the Piper Alpha drilling platform in the British sector of the North Sea.
• 7 July 1901...First three-day weather forecast issued for the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. (Northern Indiana NWSFO)
• 7 July 1952...The liner SS United States made the fastest-ever eastbound crossing of the Atlantic of 3days, 17 hours and 48 minutes on her maiden voyage from Nantucket Light Ship off New York's Long Island to Bishop Rock Lighthouse in western England.
• 8 July 1497...The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, set sail from Lisbon, Portugal with four ships on the first direct European voyage to India, first rounding Africa's Cape of Good Hope and reaching Calicut on India's southwest coast on 20 May 1498. (Wikipedia)
• 8 July 1879...The first ship to use electric lights departed from San Francisco, CA.

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