WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

12-16 June 2006

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2006 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 28 August 2006. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Ocean in the News:

• Tropical Weather Update -- The first tropical depression of the 2006 hurricane season in the North Atlantic basin (including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea) formed on Saturday and became the season's first named tropical storm, Alberto on Sunday. On Sunday afternoon, Alberto was moving northward across the Gulf of Mexico, spreading rain across Cuba and south Florida. While this tropical storm probably will not intensify to become a hurricane, it could provide beneficial rain across drought-stricken sections of northern Florida during this upcoming workweek. [CNN]
• Cleaning reefs for World Ocean Day -- In observance of World Ocean Day 2006, the Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary office and Clean Coast, a volunteer group from Savannah, GA, announced that they are sponsoring three clean-up events during June to remove trash from Georgia's marine and coastal environment. [NOAA News]
• Assessing NOAA's economic worth -- The NOAA Administrator recently released the fifth edition of the publication "Economic Statistics for NOAA" that provides a consistent set of economic statistics for various groups including NOAA management, national policy makers and the public. In addition to preliminary statistics on the economic impact of recent hurricanes, the document provides estimates of the potential economic benefits from new investments in regional coastal ocean observing systems in US waters of up to $1 billion per year. [NOAA News]
• Rises in sea level are documented -- Using a variety of instruments to accurately measure sea level, NASA oceanographers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory claim that the average annual rate of sea level rise between 1993 and 2005 was 0.1 inches (3 mm). Measurements of sea level were made from the TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 and GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites, along with those from the Argo float program. The changes in sea level, which are not uniformly distributed around the globe, are the result of several factors including thermal expansion, addition of water from melting glaciers and changes in salinity. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Ocean vortex seen from space -- A team of scientists from Australia, the US, France and Spain have recently discovered a large spiral circulation in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia. They made their discovery of the vortex from images produced from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite, which revealed high chlorophyll concentrations associated with coastal plankton within the vortex. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Even the sea off Ireland has turned blue-green -- Images produced by data obtained by the MODIS instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite shows a large phytoplankton bloom off the coast of the Emerald Isle that turned the sea water a bluish green color. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Odd-shaped rocks were built by ancient marine life forms -- Australian scientists claim that the odd-shaped rocks called stromatolites found in Western Australia provide evidence that these structures were built by microbes in a shallow sea approximately 3.4 billion years ago. [BBC News]
• Monitoring mussel temperatures -- Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of South Carolina have been obtaining temperature data from a "robomussel" data logger and suggest that depending upon where they live, the temperatures of real California mussels could increase between two and six Fahrenheit degrees by 2100. [EurekAlert!]
• Synchronous ending of Ice Age noted -- Based upon their dating of glacial moraines using a cosmogenic or surface-exposure dating method, scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Maine suggest that except for regions of the North Atlantic, most of the Earth began to warm with a nearly synchronous initiation of glacial retreat at approximately 17,500 years ago. They argue that the delayed warming in Greenland and other locations surrounding the North Atlantic was due to meltwater from North American and European continental ice sheets causing the "meridional overturning circulation" of the North Atlantic waters to cease and significantly reduce the poleward transport of tropical heat. [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.

Historical Events:

• 12 June 1925...Lake Huron Lightship radio fog signal was placed in commission, the first signal of this kind on the Great Lakes. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 12 June 1991...On the same day that Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines awakened from its 635-year slumber, Typhoon Yunya crossed Luzon province. Mudslides and flooding caused many deaths and when added to the impacts of Pinatubo left more than a million homeless. (The Weather Doctor)
• 13 June 1415...Henry the Navigator, the prince of Portugal, embarked on an expedition to Africa.
• 13 June 1881...The steamer USS Jeannette was crushed in Arctic ice pack north of Siberia as the 1879-1881 Jeannette Arctic Exploring Expedition under the command of Lieutenant Commander George Washington DeLong, USN, attempted to reach the North Pole by ship. (Naval Historical Center)
• 13 June 1977...A tropical cyclone crossed the Arabian Sea from near the Laccadive Islands off southwest India and slammed into the island of Masirah, sultanate of Oman. Winds reached at least 104 mph and the 24-hour rainfall total was 16.95 inches. About 99% of buildings were damaged. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 14 June 1834...The first US patent for a practical underwater diving suit was issued to Leonard Norcross of Dixfield, ME. One month earlier, he tested his suit, an airtight leather outfit with a brass helmet connected via a rubber hose to an air bellows pump on a boat, in the Webb River. (Today in Science History)
• 15 June 1744...British Admiral George Anson returned to England after circumnavigating the globe in an expedition that lasted nearly four years.
• 15 June 1990...The first use of bioremediation in open waters was to treat an oil slick from the supertanker Mega Borg following an explosion and fire on 8 June 1990 approximately 70 miles south-southeast of Galveston, TX. The 3-day bioremediation tests were conducted using oil-metabolizing bacteria and nutrients. The results of the tests were inconclusive. (Today in Science History)
• 16 June 1903...The famous Norwegian explorer, Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen, began the first east-west navigation of the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by leaving Oslo, Norway on the ship Gjøa. Amundsen and six others spent two winters exploring over land and ice from the place currently called Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, Canada. (Wikipedia)
• 17 June 1579...During his "Famous Voyage," Sir Francis Drake, the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, claimed San Francisco Bay for England, calling the region along the northern California coast "Nova Albion" (meaning, New England). (Wikipedia)
• 16-18 June 1972...The greatest three-day rainfall in Hong Kong since 1889 produced 25.68 inches and resulted in disastrous landslides and building collapses. More than 100 people died, while thousands were made homeless. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 18 June 1903...Alaska's first coastal lighthouse, Scotch Cap Lighthouse, was lit. This light, which was also the first major lighthouse built by the U.S. outside the 48 coterminous states, was located near the west end of Unimak Island on the Pacific side of Unimak Pass, the main passage through the Aleutian Islands into the Bering Sea. This light in an octagonal wooden tower was replaced by a concrete lighthouse in 1940, which was destroyed by a tsunami in 1946, with the loss of the five crewmen stationed there. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 18 June 1875...A severe coastal storm (or possible hurricane) struck the Atlantic coast from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. Eastport, ME reported wind gusts to 57 mph. (David Ludlum)
• Month of June...According to a 1969 US Army technical report, the average dewpoint temperature at Ras Andahglie and Assab, Eritrea (Ethiopia) average slightly more than 84ºF. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2006, The American Meteorological Society.